Solar thermal technic is mainly composed of solar thermal collector, as a device designed to collect solar heat transmitted by the solar radiation, to communicate it to a heat transfer fluid (liquid or gas), in order to accumulated it in a heat storage component. This heat can then be used to prepare hot water, for auxiliary building heating or in various industrial processes.

Solar thermal applications are divided into several types, especially in

-small scale residential units for hot water preparation in response to domestic heat needs using glazed collectors or p.ex. pool heating with open collectors;

-large decentralized thermodynamic solar power plants, producing heat and electricity using parabolic trackers combined with heat-power coupling systems.

The heat transfer fluid may be running water, circulating air, an antifreeze mixture (p.ex. water-glycol), a phase change fluid, or an oil having a higher vaporization temperature for applications requiring very high temperatures (p.ex. high temperature sterilization).

Solar thermal systems are mainly used in our latitude for the preparation of domestic hot water for individual homes, especially for individual and homes with combined solar thermal systems (p.ex domestic hot water and building heating), or as a remote solar heating plant, to meet the needs of industrial processes and even for solar thermal air conditioning (p.ex extracting heat from the ambient air)!