The head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Professor Dr. Aqeel Abdullah Mohammed, chaired the committee for the master's thesis defense of Ghada Shamil in the Electromechanical Engineering Department at the Technological University. Her thesis was titled:

"Active Control of Parabolic Trough Solar Collector Augmented by Porous Media"

This study presents a parabolic trough solar collector utilizing different porous media. The experimental setup consists of a parabolic reflector mounted on a support frame with a mechanical arm for manual tracking, along with an evacuated tube containing a U-shaped copper tube positioned above the reflector. The experiments were conducted during April and May 2024, between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM. Each experiment was repeated three times to ensure reliable readings. The study investigated three different flow rates and two types of porous media: aluminum fibers and sand. The porous media were installed around the copper tube inside the evacuated tube.

On the other hand, artificial intelligence (NARX) was used to model the system based on the outlet water temperature. Additionally, a PID controller tuned by the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm was employed to control the temperature. The results demonstrated effective control of the outlet water temperature, with the best model achieved at Nn = 5 and Nd = 7, yielding the lowest mean square error (MSE) of 0.5645. As for the PSO-tuned intelligent PID controller, it showed optimal performance when the values of 𝐾𝑃, 𝐾𝐼, and 𝐾𝐷 were 41.524, 0.996, and 50, respectively, with the lowest mean square error (MSE) of 0.6468.