Abstract
Supplies of potable water from the conventional resources are descending due to increased industrialization, extensive irrigation and rapid population growth. In Cyprus, a country without any perennial river, fixed rainy season and depleted natural aquifers faces severe water shortage in future. Desalination along with power cogeneration certainly poses as the most suitable option in the long run to avoid any water scarcity and rationing. This dissertation introduces all the major desalination processes and is focused on the commercially employed desalination processes. The processes have been discussed in relation with their history, principle, capacity, costs, market capitalization, energy consumption, required pre treatments, future growth potential and their environmental effects. The dissertation extensively investigates Cyprus’ existing water resources, water scarcity in Cyprus, the need and existing desalination including the overall power generation capacity. This dissertation is unique in the sense of covering all the major desalination processes and investigating the Cyprus water resources as a whole outlining the need for commercially viable desalination and power, cogeneration facilities. The aim of this study is to expand the existing MSF systems to a higher level for potential changes which they will help the industrial desalination in increasing the efficiency and reducing the costs. This is a new three stage distillation system which will be designed and constructed in Cyprus. The plant will be manufactured from local materials by local manpower and requires little maintenance and operating costs. Hence it offers relatively higher efficiency which enables this system to be more cost effective.