To dream or not to dream in Havana: multi-criteria decision-making for material and energy recovery from municipal solid wastes

Currently, solid waste management strategies in Havana are outdated. This paper aimed to select the most suitable alternative for integrating material recovery facilities (MRF) with waste-to-energy technologies in the city of Havana, Cuba. Seven scenarios were considered: combustion, gasification, and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) with and without carbon capture, and anaerobic digestion (AD). The selection was based on environmental, techno-economic, and social parameters using an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as a multi-criteria decision-making tool (MCDM). The MCDM-AHP accounted for qualitative criteria (based on experts’ judgments) and quantitative (based on Aspen Plus simulation models). From the MRF, 63% of the input recyclable materials were recovered, representing an energy saving of 256 kW-h/t_MSW. The AHP results showed that environmental criteria had the highest priority, resulting in ~63% and ~73% higher than social and techno-economic criteria, respectively. Likewise, from the techno-economic, environmental, and social sub-criteria analysis, investment risk, pollution, and work safety had the major concern compared with the other sub-criteria levels. Overall, MRF+AD was the most suitable scenario (21% preference) for treating Havana’s municipal solid waste (MSW), followed by combustion and gasification with carbon capture, respectively. This study confirms that AD is a preference option for emerging economies like Cuba, mainly due to low environmental pollution, high social acceptance, and financial stability in the long term.