  Parabolic trough mirror plants are a popular design for the conversion of
solar energy to electricity via thermal processes. The receiver unit (RU) for
absorbing the concentrated solar radiation is limited to maximum temperature
(580 degree Celsius) and is responsible for efficiency losses mainly via
thermal radiation. We built a RU in the laboratory to study the thermal
performance for different designs and we companied this study with a
mathematical module implemented on a simulation code. In this work, the
simulation and the first set of experiments show a good agreement, validating
the applicability of the code.
