The water scarcity in the world in the near future become to a global challenge.
The main aim of present study was to elucidate the performance of the three identical solar distillation units with different configurations under climatic conditions of the city of Tehran. All systems were equipped with different heating source that are thermoelectric heating modules (TEH), copper heater (CH), and solar water heater (SWH) while all system assisted with an active external condenser. Performance of all systems is scrutinized from different thermodynamic, thermoeconomic, environmental, and energy-matrices viewpoints. Findings revealed that the highest daily and annual productivity obtained by the system with CH. Economic analysis on the basis of uniform annual cost (UAC) revealed that the system with SWH has the lowest cost per liter (CPL) rather than other system while the highest CPL was for the case of TEH. Furthermore, it was concluded that the system with TEH obtain the most promising results in terms of exergoeconomic, enviroeconomic, and energy payback time (EPBT) because of the highest daily and annual energy and exergy output. Eventually, the environmental analysis indicated that the solar still with CH with 6342, 48.169, 18.46 kg emission of CO2, SO2. And NO have the best results rather than other systems.