Performance analysis of a desalination plant as a single unit with mandatory shutdown during winter

The aim of this paper is to present a reliability and availability analysis of a desalination plant as a single unit. The plant operates round the clock for water production and the complete plant is under shut down state for 30 days during winter season for annual maintenance. The water supply during the shutdown period is maintained through ground water and storage system. Any failure or annual maintenance brings the plant to a complete halt and the plant goes under forced outage state. Tripping statesare also noted which requires only servicing. For the present analysis, seven years failure data has been extracted from operations and maintenance reports of a desalination plant in Oman. Measures of the plant effectiveness have been obtained using semi-Markov processes and regenerative point techniques