Department of Chemical Engineering, Durban Institute of Technology, Durban 4000, South Africa; University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa; Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States
Telukdarie, A., Department of Chemical Engineering, Durban Institute of Technology, Durban 4000, South Africa; Brouckaert, C., University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa; Huang, Y., Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States
The evaluation of environmental cleanliness of an electroplating facility, as compared to the best available practice, has been a challenge, particularly in small or mid-sized plants. This is mainly due to the fact that the detailed plant data necessary for evaluation is always difficult to obtain completely and precisely. To alleviate the data-scarce and lack-of-skill related problems in environmental performance evaluation for cleaner production, a fuzzy-logic-based decision analysis approach is introduced in this paper. The attractiveness of the approach is illustrated by the analysis of rinse system management. The approach is general and thus is suitable for any type of environmental cleanliness problems in the electroplating industry.
Clean rooms; Decision theory; Evaluation; Fuzzy sets; Metal cleaning; Metal finishing; Plating; Production engineering; Waste management; Waste treatment; Cleaner production evaluation; Electroplating industry; Fuzzy logic based approach; Rinse system management; Surface finishing plants; Electroplating shops