One of the most substantial aspects of the solar still systems that should be significantly considered is
their economic and environment aspects. The present study deals with analyzing and identifying the
behaviors of a cascade solar still desalination system in the presence of different insulation types and
phase change materials. A Matlab code is developed to solve the energy equations for different components
of the system simultaneously using ODE-45 solver. A comprehensive thermal, economic and
environment analyses performed on the solar still desalination system with different insulation types
and phase change materials. With selecting three objective functions namely total annual cost (TAC),
exergy efficiency (hex), and exergy-based CO2 mitigation ð4CO2;exbasedÞ, the tri-objective optimization is
carried out for two considered cases of solar still desalination units. The thermal analysis represents that
among different insulation types phenolic foam with 9.42 kg=m2 per day has the highest value of distilled
water production. The total annual cost analysis infers that the system with paraffin as phase change
material (PCM) and glass wool as insulation, with 71.67 $, has the lowest TAC. The tri-objective optimization
results demonstrate that for both considered cases three objectives are improved considerably
compare with non-optimized solar still systems.