Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

The application of Fuzzy Delphi Method and Fuzzy AHP in lubricant

regenerative technology selection
Yu-Lung Hsu a,*, Cheng-Haw Lee a, V.B. Kreng b
a
b

Department of Resources Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Department of Industrial and Information Management, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan 701, Taiwan

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords:
Lubricant regenerative technology
Fuzzy Delphi Method
Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process

a b s t r a c t
Due to the funding scale and complexity of lubricant regenerative technology, the selection of recycling
technology and policy for waste lubricant oil can be viewed as a multiple-attribute decision process that
is normally made by a review committee with experts from academia, industry, and the government. This
study aims to provide a systematic approach towards the technology selection, in which two phase procedures are proposed. The rst stage utilizes Fuzzy Delphi Method to obtain the critical factors of the
regenerative technologies by interviewing the foregoing experts. In the second stage, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is applied to nd the importance degree of each criterion as the measurable indices of the
regenerative technologies. This study considers eight kinds of regenerative technologies which have
already been widely used, and establishes a ranking model that provides decision makers to assessing
the prior order of regenerative technologies. The empirical study indicates that the Proper scale is
the most important evaluation criterion considered in overall experts. The demonstration of how the
prior order of regenerative technologies changes under various domains of experts is addressed as well.
2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
The efcient recycling of waste lubricant could help reduce both
the environmental pollution and gas emission from greenhouses,
thus, creating a huge efciency either from environmentallyfriendly or economic levels. Waste lubricant recycling and regeneration not only save the cost of lubricant, but also contribute to
environmental protection. The proper management of dispose
and recycling of the waste oil becomes critical to the management
of environment (Cheng, Lin, Chang, & Huang, 2006/1). Regenerating waste oil into chemical feedstock or fuel oil is one of the preferred recycle methods.
At present, there are eight kinds of common lubricant recycling
technologies as follows: (1) acid/clay process; (2) distillation process; (3) solvent de-asphalting process; (4) TFE + hydro-nishing;
(5) TFE + clay nishing; (6) TFE + solvent nishing; (7) solvent
extraction hydro-nishing and (8) TDA + clay nishing and TDA +
hydro-nishing. These technologies are different in economic benet, technology maturity and environmental impact, and new
technologies have been developed and applied continuously. The
government shall be responsible for technology assessment, and
combine the views of academia, industrial circles and government
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: uf571123@ms5.hinet.net (Y.-L. Hsu), kreng@mail.ncku.edu.tw
(V.B. Kreng).
0957-4174/$ - see front matter 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2009.05.068

sectors to set up a measuring index for selection of lubricant recycling technology.

The traditional Delphi Method, developed by Dalkey and Helmer
(1963), has been widely used to obtain a consistent ow of answers
through the results of questionnaires (Hwang & Lin, 1987; Reza &
Vassilis, 1988). Delphi is an expert opinion survey method with
three features: anonymous response, iteration and controlled feedback and nally statistical group response. However, some weaknesses have been exposed, it needs repetitive surveys to allow
forecasting values to converge which requires much more time
and cost (Hwang & Lin, 1987; Ishikawa et al., 1993). Furthermore,
in many real situations, experts judgments can not be properly reected in quantitative terms. Some ambiguity will result due to the
differences in the meanings and interpretations of the experts
opinions. Since people use linguistic terms, such as good or very
good to reect their preferences, the concept of combining fuzzy
set theory and Delphi was proposed by Murray, Pipino, and Gigch
(1985), and named the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM).
Lubricant regenerative technology selection is a multiple criteria decision-making problem. Among these, the Fuzzy Analytic
Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is one of the most popular (Kahraman,
Cebeci, & Ruan, 2004; Teng & Tzeng, 1996; Zhau & Goving,
1991). People often use knowledge that is imprecise rather than
precise. The fuzzy set theory approaches could resemble human
reasoning in use of approximate information and uncertainty to
generate decisions. It was specically designed to mathematically

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Y.-L. Hsu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

represent uncertainty and vagueness and provide formalized

tools for dealing with the imprecision intrinsic to many problems
(Kahraman et al., 2004; Williams, 2003; Zadeh, 1965).
Consequently, to make this study more sensible and gain a more
representative description of the decision-making process, this
study would apply the FAHP to investigate which evaluation
criterion is the most important in overall technical committees.
This study contains two stages: the rst stage is to establish the
key factors for evaluation of the waste lubricant recycling technologies, and use FDM by consulting experts of academia, industries
and government sectors to select a technological selection criterion, in order to nd out the important factors to be considered
while selecting a technology; the second stage is based on FAHP,
and consults experts of various elds to nd out the importance
of various criteria, in order to obtain the measuring index for
selecting lubricant recycling technology.

2. Methodology
2.1. Fuzzy Delphi Method
Fuzzy Delphi Method was proposed by Ishikawa et al. (1993), and
it was derived from the traditional Delphi technique and fuzzy set theory. Noorderhaben (1995) indicated that applying the Fuzzy Delphi
Method to group decision can solve the fuzziness of common understanding of expert opinions. As for the selection of fuzzy membership
functions, previous researches were usually based on triangular fuzzy
number, trapezoidal fuzzy number and Gaussian fuzzy number. This
study applied the triangular membership functions and the fuzzy theory to solving the group decision. This study used FDM for the screening of alternate factors of the rst stage. The fuzziness of common
understanding of experts could be solved by using the fuzzy theory,
and evaluated on a more exible scale. The efciency and quality of
questionnaires could be improved. Thus, more objective evaluation
factors could be screened through the statistical results.
The FDM steps are as follows:
1. Collect opinions of decision group: Find the evaluation score of
each alternate factors signicance given by each expert by
using linguistic variables in questionnaires.
2. Set up triangular fuzzy numbers: Calculate the evaluation value
of triangular fuzzy number of each alternate factor given by
experts, nd out the signicance triangular fuzzy number of
the alternate factor. This study used the geometric mean model
of mean general model proposed by Klir and Yuan (1995) for
FDM to nd out the common understanding of group decision.
The computing formula is illustrated as follows:
Assuming the evaluation value of the signicance of No. j
fij aij ; bij ; cij ;
element given by No. i expert of n experts is w
fj of
i 1; 2; . . . ; n; j 1; 2; . . . ; m. Then the fuzzy weighting w
fj aj ; bj ; cj ; j 1; 2; . . . ; m.Among which
No. j element is w

aj Minfaij g;
i

bj

n
1X
bij ;
n i1

Schematic diagram of Fuzzy Delphi Method threshold is shown

in Fig. 1.
2.2. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process
Laarhoven and Pedrycz (1983) proposed the Fuzzy Analytic
Hierarchy Process in 1983, which was an application of the combination of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Theory. The
linguistic scale of traditional AHP method could express the fuzzy
uncertainty when a decision maker is making a decision. Therefore,
FAHP converts the opinions of experts from previous denite values to fuzzy numbers and membership functions, presents triangular fuzzy numbers in paired comparison of matrices to develop
FAHP, thus the opinions of experts approach human thinking model, so as to achieve more reasonable evaluation criteria.
As for the experts opinions, this study adopted the Similarity
Aggregation Method (SAM) proposed by Hsu and Chen (1996) to
integrate experts weight values for various evaluation criteria,
the fuzzy weight fraction of criterion of each hierarchy is obtained
through the calculating mode of FAHP, and then the sequence of
signicance of each criterion is determined based on the hierarchy
series connection and defuzzication mode.
Laarhoven and Pedrycz (1983) proposed the FAHP, which is to
show that many concepts in the real world have fuzziness. Therefore, the opinions of decision makers are converted from previous
denite values to fuzzy numbers and membership numbers in
FAHP, so as to present in FAHP matrix.
The steps of this study based on FAHP method are as follows:
1. Determine problems: Determine the current decision problems
to be solved, so as to ensure future analyses correct, this study
discussed the evaluation criteria for verication of credit card.
2. Set up hierarchy architecture: Determine the evaluation criteria
having indexes to be the criteria layer of FAHP, for the selection
of evaluation criteria, relevant criteria and feasible schemes can
be found out through reading literatures and collective discussions. This study screened the important factors conforming to
target problems through FDM investigating experts opinions,
to set up the hierarchy architecture.
3. Set up fuzzy paired comparison matrices: Compare the relative
importance between factors given by decision makers in pairs,
set up paired comparison matrices, after the denite values
are converted to fuzzy numbers according to the denitions in
Table 1 and Fig. 2, integrate the fuzzy evaluation values of
experts based on the SAM concept proposed by Hsu and Chen
(1996).
4. Calculate fuzzy weight value: Obtain the characteristic vector
value of fuzzy matrix, namely the weight value of element. This

cj Maxfcij g
i

3. Defuzzication: Use simple center of gravity method to defuzzify

fj of each alternate element to denite value
the fuzzy weight w
Sj , the followings are obtained:

Sj

aj bj cj
;
3

j 1; 2; . . . ; m

4. Screen evaluation indexes: Finally proper factors can be screened

out from numerous factors by setting the threshold a. The principle of screening is as follows:
If Sj P a, then No. j factor is the evaluation index.
If Sj < a, then delete No. j factor.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of Fuzzy Delphi Method threshold.

Y.-L. Hsu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

Table 1
The denition of every fuzzy number.
Fuzzy number

Denition

~ 1; 1; 1
1
~ 1; 2; 3
2
~ 2; 3; 4
3
~ 3; 4; 5
4
~ 4; 5; 6
5
~ 5; 6; 7
6
~ 6; 7; 8
7
~ 7; 8; 9
8
~ 8; 9; 9
9

Equally important
Judgment values between equally and moderately
Moderately more important
Judgment values between moderately and strongly
Strongly more important
Judgment values between strongly and very strongly
Very strongly more important
Judgment values between very strongly and extremely
Extremely more important

Fig. 2. Scale of fuzzy numbers.

study calculated these three positive and negative value matrices respectively by using the Column Vector Geometric Mean
Method proposed by Buckley.

Z i ai1  ai2      ain 1=n

8i

W i Z i ;Z 1  Z 2      Z n
Among which
aij : Column i row j of matrix, i; j 1; 2; . . . ; n;
Z i : column vector mean value of fuzzy number, i 1; 2; . . . ; n;
W i : weight of No. i factor.
: multiply fuzzy numbers, e.g. assuming two triangular fuzzy
e a1 ; b1 ; c1 ; B
e a2 ; b2 ; c2 ,
numbers A

eB
e a1 ; b1 ; c1  a2 ; b2 ; c2 a1  a2 ; b1  b2 ; c1  c2 :
A
;: divide fuzzy numbers, e.g.: assuming two triangular fuzzy
e a1 ; b1 ; c1 ; B
e a2 ; b2 ; c2 ,
numbers A

e B
e a1 ; b1 ; c1 ;a2 ; b2 ; c2 a1 =a2 ; b1 =b2 ; c1 =c2 :
A;
5. Hierarchy series connection: Connect all hierarchies in series, to
obtain all factors weights.
6. Defuzzication: Convert fuzzy numbers to easy-comprehended
denite values, this study adopts the center of gravity method
to solve fuzzy numbers.

GA

Pn
i1 uA xi  xi
P
n
i1 uA xi

7. Sequencing: Sequence defuzzied criteria.

3. Lubricant regenerative technology selection in Taiwan: a
background
The sales volume in the Taiwan lubricant market was registered
separately as 400,000 kl and 450,000 kl in 2004 and 2005, and the

421

generation rate of vehicle waste lubricant and industrial waste lubricant was 90.6% and 55.6%, respectively. According to the Planning and Rate Calculation of Waste Lubricant Recovery
formulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in
1999, vehicle lubricant accounted for about 59.7%, and industrial
lubricant for 40.3% of the Taiwan lubricant market. It is thus estimated that the annual yield of vehicle lubricant was about
240,000 kl (45  59.7%  90.6% = 24.3), and of industrial lubricant
about 100,000 kl (45  40.3%  55.6% = 10.0) in 2005.
According to the investigation, most of the waste lubricants in
Taiwan are recycled and reused as secondary oil and fuel (approx.
94%), but the remaining portion leads to environmental pollution
(Table 2).
The waste lubricant must meet environmentally-friendly and
application criteria for recovery and reuse. Two key indicators include pollution level and viscosity index in this respect. In Europe,
the regenerative oils are classied mainly according to the content
of chlorides. Since chlorides are harmful to the human body, and
complex nishing processes shall be required during the regeneration process, the chlorine content in reclaimed waste oil shall
not exceed 50 ppm in EU regulations.
A higher viscosity index of waste lubricant means a higher suitability for regeneration into lubricant. Viscosity is the most important consideration in choosing lubricants. The strength of the
lubricant lm is approximately proportional to its viscosity, so
the higher viscosity indicates the stronger strength of the lubricant
lm. The viscosity index (VI) refers to the changing degree of viscosity dependent on temperature: the lower VI means a higher viscosity change in the case of slight temperature change, and vice
versa. Thus, in the case of a higher viscosity index, no nishing process shall be additionally required to improve VI, making it more
suitable for recovery and reuse with a relatively smaller operating
cost.
In 2005, there is approx. 340,000 kl of waste lubricant in Taiwan, so the recovery rate is about 4% if the audited statistical
recovery yield of 14,000 kl in the same year is divided by
340,000 kl. As compared with European countries, it is found that
Luxembourg had a recovery rate of 39%, and the average recovery
rate of Europe was 50% back in 2000.

4. Evaluating model application and results

1. Reviewing relevant literature of lubricant regenerative technology and proposing important criteria:
More than 17 criteria for lubricant regenerative technology
based on reviewing relevant literature (Begum, Siwar, Pereira,
& Jaafar, 2006; Emery, Davies, Grifths, & Williams, 2007; Finnveden, 1999; International Maritime Organization, 2004; Lin,
Lin, & Jong, 2007) and the current lubricant regenerative technology selection approach are proposed. Denitions of evaluating criteria of the lubricant regenerative technology selection
are presented in Table 3.
2. Screen important criteria by Fuzzy Delphi Method:
This stage includes three sections. Firstly, it lists three main
aspects and 17 items as the key evaluation items of lubricant
regenerative technology, and a FDM interview table is set up.
The second section is the interview with nine experts from
the academic community, lubricant oil producers and competent authority ofcers in Taiwan. Delphi Method mostly aims
at easy common understanding of group opinions through
twice provision of questionnaires. FDM formed by adding the
fuzzy theory in, not only maintains the advantage of Delphi
Method, but also reduces the provision times of questionnaires
when using traditional Delphi Method as well as the cost. For
the third section, the opinions of experts in FDM questionnaires

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Y.-L. Hsu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

Table 2
Distribution and hazards of waste lubricant in Taiwan.
Distribution

Common purpose

Percentage

Hazards

Recycling dealer
Factories
Secondary lubricating in construction
Random dumping

Secondary oil and fuel

Furnace fuel
De-molding

79.5
14
2.5
4

Inferior reclaimed oil, leading to mechanical damage

Inclusive of heavy metal, improper incineration leading to serious pollution
Pollution transfer
Serious environmental pollution

Table 3
Operational type for dening criteria.
Aspects

Criteria

The operating type dening

Technology

Operating temperature

During lubricant reclaiming steps, heating shall be used for separation, but different technologies will result in
different operating temperatures
How much lubricant oil can be extracted from each ton of waste lubricant oil is the calculation principle for recovery
rate
With reference to standard stipulated by API, there are ve types
Refers to on the aspect of application, whether this technology is only for experiments or available for industrial mass
production
Whether reuse products conform to quality and environmental laws of oil products or not

Recovery rate
Product quality
Development stage
Legitimacy of reuse quality
specications
Economy

Water cost
Cost of overall demand for
energy source
Proper scale
Cost of equipment demand
Return on investment
Subsidy

Environmental
protection

Removal of PCB
Whether generate acid sludge or
not
Whether there is residual oil
sludge or not.
Hazardous chemical substances
used in process
Depletion-of non-renewable
resources
IPCC-greenhouse effect

Take the water consumption in regenerating each ton of lubricant oil as the calculation unit, and compare with water
rate to gure out water cost
Take the energy source consumption in regenerating each ton of lubricant oil as the calculation unit (fuel oil, natural
gas, etc.), and compare with energy source price to gure out energy source cost
Take annual handling capacity (kt) as base. 210 kt/yr for small scale, 1050 ht/yr for middle scale, 50 kt/yr above for
large scale
Whether this technical operation needs more equipments which are more precise
Twenty year return on investment
The government provides subsidies for waste lubricant oil processing
Take 50 ppm as the dividing line, there are pcb residuals if the content exceeds 50 ppm
The acid sludge means during operation, the mixed precipitate of waste acid and foreign matter derived from
removing foreign matter by sulfuric acid
Oil sludge is the asphaltic substances which cannot be fractionated at the end of lubricant oil reclaiming process
Hazardous substances to environment or human body used in lubricant oil regenerating. Such as sulfuric acid or
organic solvents
Take the consumption of non-renewable resources in regenerating each ton of lubricant oil as the calculation unit
How much greenhouse effect gas will be generated during regenerating each ton of lubricant oil

are converted to triangular fuzzy numbers, and defuzzied values can be gured out after calculation. This stage adopts elements with threshold above 7, and the key evaluation items
with threshold below 7 are deleted. The important evaluation
items after screening are listed in Table 4.
3. Establish a hierarchical framework:
Based on the FDM, a general consensus among experts can be
reached to establish a hierarchical structure. The lubricant
regenerative technology can be evaluated based on three evaluation aspects and 17 evaluation criteria (Fig. 3).

4. Interview experts of all domains and integrate their opinions:Subject to who ll in AHP questionnaires possess sufcient
professional knowledge, so the interviewees are experts from
academia, lubricant producers and competent authority ofcers. The evaluation of each factor must go through consistency
verication to ensure preferable credibility of results. In order
to increase the objectivity of results, there are 17 experts to
be interviewed. In the past, the integration of opinions from
questionnaires mainly adopted geometric mean method, but
the unreasonable integration of group opinions therein would

Table 4
Evaluation criteria after FDM screening.
Aspects (code number)

Criteria (code number)

Score
Min

Max

Average

De-fuzzy

Technology (A1)

Operating temperature (C1)

Recovery rate (C2)
Product quality (C3)
Development stage (C4)

2
4
3
4

10
10
10
10

7.532
8.132
7.765
8.924

7.213
7.824
7.437
8.058

Economy (A2)

Water cost (C5)

Cost of overall demand for energy source (C6)
Proper scale (C7)
Cost of equipment demand (C8)

1
4
4
3

10
10
10
10

7.454
8.688
8.951
7.623

7.127
7.953
8.462
7.145

Environmental protection (A3)

Removal of PCB (C9)

Whether acid sludge is generated or not (C10)
Whether there is residual oil sludge or not (C11)
Hazardous chemical substances used in process (C12)

1
2
4
2

10
10
10
10

7.311
8.259
8.358
8.053

7.102
7.543
7.893
7.347

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Y.-L. Hsu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

Goal

Aspects

Criteria
Operating temperature
Recovery rate

Technology

Selection for lubricant regenerative technology

Product quality
Development stage

Water cost
Cost of overall demand for energy source
Economy
Proper scale
Cost of equipment demand

PCB removal

Environmental
protection

Acid sludge generated

residual oil sludge
Hazardous chemical substances used

Fig. 3. The hierarchy model of lubricant regenerative technology selection.

result in incorrect results. Therefore, this study adopts SAM

which was proposed by Hsu and Chen (1996), which can integrate group opinions more reasonably, so as to increase the
credibility of questionnaires.
5. Calculate the weights of evaluation criteria and weight result of
evaluation criteria:
The weight values of various elements can be obtained through
the opinions of experts resulted from SAM and the FAHP systematic steps. After sequencing, the evaluation criteria have
higher signicance, so decision makers can make correct judgments more quickly.
Table 5 is the evaluation criteria weight by FAHP, the evaluation
criteria weight is obtained based on FAHP questionnaire results of
experts, nally the questionnaire results of all experts are integrated to become the overall weight. As for different aspects, experts of various elds pay relatively consistent attention to the
operation aspect (A1) and economy aspect (A2), they give quite
high weight to these aspects, and the experts from industrial cir-

cles lay stress on the operation aspect in particular. However, the

experts from various domains have different opinions on the environmental protection aspect (A3); those from academic community and government sectors think a lot of environmental
protection aspect, while the experts from industrial circles think
less of environmental protection. For the evaluation criteria contained in various aspects, the experts of various elds are consistent with them, only a few evaluation criteria have difference in
opinions. For the operation aspect, the experts of various domains
dont have much difference in opinions, most of them lay stress on
the evaluation criteria of development stage (C4); for the economy aspect, the experts of various domains have signicant difference in water cost (C5), cost of overall demand for energy
source (C6) and equipment demand (C8), among which, experts
of industrial circles lay stress on equipment demand which is not
stressed by the experts of other two domains, but the experts of
industrial circles dont lay stress on cost of overall demand for
energy source which is stressed by the other two domains. The
industrial circles and the government sectors have much difference
in water cost; for the environmental protection aspect, the experts from various domains pay much attention to acid sludge
generated (C10), but they have difference in three evaluation criteria such as PCB removal (C9), residual oil sludge (C11) and
hazardous chemical substances used (C12), the opinions of experts from industrial circles are different from those of the experts
from the other two domains.
Fig. 4 shows the weights of lubricant regenerative technology
hierarchy model. The maximum weight obtained by combining
global priority is technology aspect (0.395) through FAHP, secondly
is the economy aspect (0.358) and environmental protection aspect (0.247). As for sequencing the global priority of various evaluation criteria, the weight of the rst four evaluation criteria
exceeds 0.1, therein the proper scale (0.1292) in the economy aspect possesses the maximum weight, but the second and third
evaluation criteria are on the technology aspect. These four evaluation criteria are paid much attention to in lubricant regenerative
technology selection; the result demonstrates technology and
economy aspects are main consideration in the evaluation process.
5. Conclusions
This study investigates the key factors in lubricant regenerative
technology selection by combining FDM, SAM and FAHP, and
establishes objective and standardized references. A total of 17 factors inuencing lubricant regenerative technology selection are
analyzed through FDM experts opinions investigation, Experts of
academia, lubricant oil industry and government sectors were
interviewed, and 12 evaluation criteria were obtained as the key
factors by interviewed bank experts. SAM and FAHP were used to

Table 5
Evaluation criteria weight of experts from different elds.
Aspects

Weights of aspects

Criteria

Weights of criteria
Academic community

Industrial circle

Government

Overall

0.395

C1
C2
C3
C4

0.135
0.282
0.274
0.309

0.092
0.308
0.312
0.288

0.091
0.294
0.279
0.336

0.105
0.295
0.284
0.316

0.322

0.358

C5
C6
C7
C8

0.143
0.238
0.377
0.242

0.105
0.192
0.360
0.343

0.215
0.283
0.301
0.201

0.153
0.234
0.361
0.252

0.357

0.247

C9
C10
C11
C12

0.253
0.294
0.128
0.325

0.125
0.399
0.235
0.241

0.261
0.280
0.144
0.315

0.195
0.351
0.168
0.286

Academic community

Industrial circle

Government

Overall

A1

0.354

0.432

0.321

A2

0.324

0.398

A3

0.322

0.170

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Y.-L. Hsu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

Goal

Aspects

Global
Ranking
priority

Criteria
Operating temperature

11

Recovery rate

Product quality

Development stage

Water cost

Cost of overall demand for energy source

Proper scale

Cost of equipment demand

Technology

Selection for lubricant regenerative technology

Economy

10

PCB removal

Environmental
protection

acid sludge generated

6
11

residual oil sludge

Hazardous chemical substances used

Fig. 4. The weights of lubricant regenerative technology hierarchy model.

integrate experts opinions to obtain the signicance evaluation of

various evaluation criteria given by experts in group decision. The
results from experts of different elds were compared and analyzed to show the similarities and differences of various experts
in lubricant regenerative technology selection. Finally, the results
of all experts were used as the evaluation index of lubricant regenerative technology selection.
The following conclusions were reached by analyzing the evaluation criteria stressed by experts of various domains when evaluating the lubricant regenerative technology selection based on the
demonstration of this study.
1. Experts of various domains lay different emphasis on three
main aspects:
The experts of academic community lay similar stress on three
aspects; only the technology aspect has a slightly higher
weight. This is probably because the experts of academic community include those of environmental industry, chemical
industry, machinery, electric machinery and so on, therefore
the three aspects have relatively mean score on weight; the
industrial circles lay emphasis on the technology and economy
aspects, the weight of environmental protection aspect is obviously low; the government sectors pay attention to the environmental protection aspect, since they care about whether
lubricant regenerative technology will generate secondary pollution or not. Due to various domain experts give quite different
weights to different aspects; it is necessary to collect all opinions of different domain experts in the course of lubricant
regenerative technology selection, so as to make the evaluation
more objective and feasible.

2. Experts of various elds pay quite different attention to evaluation criteria in environmental protection aspect:
Although the environmental protection aspect has minimum
weight, four evaluation criteria in it make experts from three
domains have most difference in their opinions. Due to PCB
removal and hazardous chemical substances used, these
two evaluation criteria because more severe secondary pollution, they are stressed by experts of academic community
and government sectors, but the industrial circles dont.
Therefore, the government legislates and sets a bafe plate
for the evaluation criteria in environmental protection aspect,
and eliminates heavy-pollution technical proposals in
advance.
3. Technology aspect is mostly concerned:
Due to many technical proposals are still in experimental development stage, or there are a few successful commercial operations, experts of various domains lay stress on the performance
of technology aspect, among which, three evaluation criteria
such as development stage, recovery rate and product
quality rank the second to fourth place in the global priority
sequence, its degree of importance is obvious.
4. Proper scale of technology is the most important evaluation criteria:
There are quite much waste lubricant oil in Taiwan, however,
too many demands of waste lubricant oil recovery processing
cannot be satised yet, The waste lubricant oil recovery volume
and the scale of potential competitors within the regional
extent should be considered in the course of lubricant regenerative technology selection, therefore, it is very important to
select proper scale technical proposal.

Y.-L. Hsu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 419425

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