The paper presents a probabilistic analysis of an evaporator of a desalination plant. Multi stage flash desalination process is being used for water purification. The desalination plant operates round the clock and many evaporators are in operation for water production. Any major failure/annual maintenance brings the evaporator to a complete halt and stops the production from that evaporator. The evaporator fails due to any one of the six types of failure. An inspection is carried out to detect the type of failure. For the present analysis, seven years maintenance data of a desalination plant has been extracted from the operations and maintenance record of the plant in Oman. An extensive probabilistic analysis of the plant is carried out and the measures of evaporator effectiveness such as mean time to evaporator failure, availability, the expected number of major, minor repairs, replacements, services, and the overall profitability incurred to the evaporator are estimated numerically. The semi-Markov processes and regenerative point techniques are used in the analysis.
