Abstract Thermal desalination technologies play a dominant role in seawater desalination, especially in GCC countries. However, the energy-intensive nature of these technologies limits their applications to relatively affluent regions. Therefore, it is of great significance to introduce new heat sources, e.g. renewable energy and industry waste heat, for thermal desalination. The spray-assisted low-temperature desalination (SLTD) is a novel technology that utilizes low-grade heat sources effectively. This paper specially adopts the SLTD technology to sensible heat sources. The performance of a conventional steam-driven SLTD system employing sensible heat sources is firstly investigated. Analytical results reveal that the conventional configuration is unable to make full use of the sensible heat sources. In order to improve energy utilization, the configuration is modified to enable internal heat recovery. The proposed configuration is able to boost the freshwater production by as much as 79%, while the desalination cost is reduced by 11%.