There have been an increasing number of studies on using a clean source of energy while reducing the dependency of fossil resources. One of the applications is found in water desalination. Parabolic solar collector systems are widely used in solar thermal plants. Moreover, the control problem is achieved by forcing outlet temperature of the fluid to track a predefined reference by tuning the fluid flow rate. 

The objective is to improve the efficiency of heat production; however, most of control strategies depend on the source term (solar irradiance) which is affected by the external working conditions. Hence, an efficient online estimation of the source term can lead to an efficient of heat production. 

Different approaches of estimation the source term have been published. In this project, modulating function method (MFM) combined with machine learning (ML) will be used to approximate an online source term.

Keywords: Renewable Energy, Solar Collector, Water treatment, Estimation, Machine learning