Recent progress in thermal and optical enhancement of low temperature solar collector

The use of renewable energy systems including wind, geothermal, and solar is increasing on a daily basis at industrial and domestic applications scale. The restrictions and regulations imposed by developed and developing countries on the industrial sector to reduce greenhouse gases emission have a significant effect on the progress and development of renewable energy systems. Among the most widely used renewable energy sources is solar energy due to its cheap maintenance and wide applications from a temperature point of view. In this work, for the first time, low-temperature solar collectors are reviewed and discussed for different types of collectors, and the various technical progress in thermal and optics are presented. The contribution of this survey is that cutting-edge techniques such as the solar collector nano-fluids for heat transfer enhancement and the phase change material for storage are delivered. The applications of these emergent techniques in different types of solar collectors are comprehensively reported and their performance is deeply discussed. It can be that the most important parameters affecting the solar collector’s performance are the geometry of the solar collectors. Subsequently, geometry modifications are reviewed and discussed for different solar collectors, and it can conclude that a proper design of solar collectors can reduce their costs by 10%. Thanks to the present systematic discussion on the low-temperature solar collectors, this work will provide fruitful information for engineers and researchers about the applications of solar collectors as well as it provides directions and future recommendations for future research in this field