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This paper describes a model to simulate the thermal transient behavior of the first cell of a solar-assisted multi-effect distillation (MED) plant. It has been designed according to the experience with an experimental solar thermal desalination system erected at CIEMAT-Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA). The non-linear first principles model has been developed using the object-oriented Modelica language. It includes two submodels corresponding to the effect and the preheater of the first cell of the MED plant. Both submodels have been calibrated and validated with experimental data. The numerical predictions show a good agreement with measured data.