Thermo-economic multi-objective optimization of solar dish-Stirling engine by implementing evolutionary algorithm

•Thermo-economic multi-objective optimization of solar dish-Stirling engine is studied.•Application of the evolutionary algorithm is investigated.•Error analysis is done to find out the error through investigation. In the recent years, remarkable attention is drawn to Stirling engine due to noticeable advantages, for instance a lot of resources such as biomass, fossil fuels and solar energy can be applied as heat source. Great number of studies are conducted on Stirling engine and finite time thermo-economic is one of them. In the present study, the dimensionless thermo-economic objective function, thermal efficiency and dimensionless power output are optimized for a dish-Stirling system using finite time thermo-economic analysis and NSGA-II algorithm. Optimized answers are chosen from the results using three decision-making methods. Error analysis is done to find out the error through investigation.