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O. Phillips Agboola 1 and I. S. Al-Mutaz 1 and Jamel Orfi 1 and Fuat Egelioglu 2
Academic Editor:Jianbo Yu
1, College of Engineering, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia
2, Mechanical Engineering Department, Eastern Mediterranean University, Via Mersin 10, Turkey
Received 6 March 2013; Accepted 9 January 2014; 18 February 2014
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
In many parts of the developed countries, most especially in millennium cities, the supply of potable water to homes is often taken for granted by the people. The assumption that potable water exists in abundance is luxury to those residing in the desert regions of the world. Water as we know it today does not exist as potable in most sources due to contamination (because of industrial and household waste contaminations), heavy metals contents (in some cases), and salinity. In order to use water for human consumption (drinking and/or cooking), it must be treated to get rid of organisms capable of causing all sorts of diseases and minerals and organic substances that could cause harm. Potable water should be colourless (free from colour) and be free from odour, apparent turbidity, and taste. Many developing (and underdeveloped) countries are struggling to make potable water available to their citizens, due to nonavailability of adequate water sources and/or poor management of the available water sources. In most parts of the world, the demand for water outweighs its supply, a situation calling for innovative technologies for new water sources. Cyprus is located on the Mediterranean basin, with very limited potable water sources. The country is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea; the seawater source is not readily consumable. The northern part of Cyprus is under economic embargo, a situation that exponentially worsens the fresh water availability on that part of the island. The government does not supply potable water to households due to the high cost of treating the high salinity water sources. Seawater intrusion because of over extraction of underground water and consistent drought has led to the high salinity of the water sources [1]....