Techno-economic and environmental assessment of a novel polygeneration system based on integration of biomass air-steam gasification and solar parabolic trough collector

•A novel polygeneration system based on biomass and solar energy has been introduced.•The products of the system are power, heat, freshwater, and hydrogen.•Artificial Neural Networks-Genetic Programming as a Machine Learning tool is used to model MED desalination.•The feasibility of three biomass fuels for the studied system has been investigated.•Monthly average solar radiation analysis was used for the studied system.