Equilibrium Strategy Based Recycling Facility Site Selection towards Mitigating Coal Gangue Contamination

• Main Authors: Jiuping Xu, Lurong Fan, Chengwei Lv
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-02-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: coal gangue contamination; recycling facility; site selection; equilibrium strategy; environmental improvement
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/2/251

Environmental pollution caused by coal gangue has been a significant challenge for sustainable development; thus, many coal gangue reduction approaches have been proposed in recent years. In particular, coal gangue facility (CGF) construction has been considered as an efficient method for the control and recycling of coal gangue. Meanwhile, the identification and selection of suitable CGF sites is a fundamental task for the government. Therefore, based on the equilibrium strategy, a site selection approach under a fuzzy environment is developed to mitigate coal gangue contamination, which integrates a geographical information system (GIS) technique and a bi-level model to identify candidate CGF sites and to select the most suitable one. In this situation, the GIS technique used to identify potential feasible sites is able to integrate a great deal of geographical data tofitwithpracticalcircumstances;thebi-levelmodelusedtoscreentheappropriatesitecanreasonably dealwiththeconflictsbetweenthelocalauthorityandthecolliery. Moreover,aKarush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) condition-based approach is used to find an optimal solution, and a case study is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results across different scenarios show that appropriate site selection can achieve coal gangue reduction targets and that a suitable excess stack level can realize an environmental-economic equilibrium. Finally, some propositions and management recommendations are given.