Abstract Solar concentrating systems are one of the most promising technologies to supply process heat or generate electricity. Responding to the global problem of increasing pollutants in the atmosphere and contributing to the diversification of the world’s energy matrix. In this sense, the Parabolic Trough Collector system represents the technology with the greatest technological maturity and hours of commercial operation. Thus, this paper presents an exergetic analysis of this type of system, based on the configuration of a system installed in the city of Itajuba-MG, Brazil. As a way to identify the improvement potentials of this type of system and thus obtain performance improvements. In the initial stage, the exergetic balance on the system’s receiver is developed. The effect of the loss of exergy and the destruction of exergy on the exergy of the fluid inside the receiver tube is determined. In the next stage, the required parameters were defined to calculate the terms defined in the first stage. Among these parameters is the effect of exergy of solar irradiation, heat losses, the optical efficiency of the collector, and heat absorbed by the heat transfer fluid. The results obtained show that the optical losses of the collectors of this type of plant represent one of the main causes of exergy losses. Additionally, it was possible to determine that for low-temperature applications, water allows the best exergetic use.