Int J Performability Eng ›› 2013, Vol. 9 ›› Issue (5): 523-528.doi: 10.23940/ijpe.13.5.p523.mag

• Original articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Reliability Analysis of a Seven Unit Desalination Plant with Shutdown during Winter Season and Repair/Maintenance on FCFS Basis

VIZS. M. RIZWAN1, N. PADMAVATHI2, ANITA PAL3, and G. TANEJA4   

  1. 1,2 Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Caledonian College of Engineering, OMAN
    3 Department of Mathematics, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, INDIA
    4 Department of Mathematics, M.D .University, Rohtak, INDIA

Abstract:

In many desalination plants, multi stage flash desalination process is normally used for sea water purification and the reliability analysis of such a complex system with standby support mechanism is of great importance to avoid big loses. Thus, the aim of this paper is to present a reliability analysis of evaporators of a desalination plant. The desalination plant operates round the clock and during the normal operation; six of the seven evaporators are in operation for water production while one evaporator is always under scheduled maintenance and used as standby. The complete plant is shut down for about one month during winter season for annual maintenance. The water supply during shutdown period is maintained through ground water and storage system. Any major failure or annual maintenance brings the evaporator/plant to a complete halt and the plant goes under forced outage state. For the present analysis, seven years failure data has been extracted from operations and maintenance reports of a desalination plant in Oman. Various measures of the plant effectiveness have been obtained probabilistically. Semi-Markov processes and regenerative point techniques are used in the entire analysis.


Received on February 21, 2013, revised on June 09, 2013
References: 3