A multi-criteria approach for biomass crop selection under fuzzy environment

Abstract

The type of biomass crop has a significant impact on the feasibility of ethanol production. Since biomass crop type can have various environmental and economic impacts, the selection of an optimal crop type is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this paper, we determine criteria for decision makers and farmers to select the crop type in biomass production. In this method, literature is reviewed and analyzed in order to build up the evaluation model. We provide the evaluation criteria with respect to economic, environmental, and social aspects and use these criteria to evaluate a set of biomass crop types for Kansas among available alternatives. A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) method is considered to establish an evaluation model and identify weights of the determined criteria.