As a general background to parabolic trough technology, NREL’s troughnet is a good resource, as is Duffie and Beckman’s “Solar Engineering of Thermal Processses.” For info on the organic Rankine cycle we use, any thermodynamics textbook should have some discussion on it, and an introduction written by our colleague Sylvain Quoilin can be found here. The following links are also good places to find information about these types of solar energy systems:

Websites:
Power From The Sun
Sandia National Labs Energy Page
CSP Today

Books:

Principles of Solar Engineering
Concentrating Solar Power Technology Developments

World Bank report

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