Testing process heat collectors - An overview on methodologies and categories

The paper sums up the latest developments in the standardization work on concentrating solar thermal collectors, especially focused on the CEN technical committee 312 working group 1 (CEN/TC 312 WG 1) [2]. Also the ongoing work with Standard 600 [1] for concentrating collectors on the North-American side is discussed. The paper sorts the workflow towards a solution for concentrating collectors so far and shows differences is the structural approaches. The paper does not discuss in detail the differences in different technical methodologies to characterize the thermal performance of collectors. Finally it opens up the discussion for the categorization and the differentiation which could be a possible sound solution