Two types of solar evacuated tube have been used to measure their heating efficiency and temperature with fluids of water and N-2 respectively with a parabolic trough concentrator. Experiments demonstrate that both evacuated tubes present a good heat transfer with the fluid of water, the heating efficiency is about 70-80%, and the water is easy to boil when liquid rate is less than 0.0046 kg/s. However, the efficiency of solar concentrating system with evacuated tube for heating N-2 gas is less than 40% when the temperature of N-2 gas reaches 320-460 degrees C. A model for evacuated tube heated by solar trough concentrating system has been built in order to further analyze the characteristics of fluid which flow evacuated tube. It is found that the model agrees with the experiments to within 5.2% accuracy. The characteristics of fluid via evacuated tube heated by solar concentrated system are analyzed under the varying conditions of solar radiation and trough aperture area. This study supports research work on using a solar trough concentrating system to perform ammonia thermo-chemical energy storage for 24 h power generation. The current research work also has application to solar refrigeration. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.