In the last decades, solar thermal power plants based on parabolic trough concentrators have been widely deployed in the industry sectors. Indeed, there are various applications for thermal plants in industry, such as desalination, refrigeration and air heating. In this work, a dynamic simulation of a small sized parabolic trough collector plant is conducted, using TRNSYS software, for the purpose of generating heated air for an industrial factory. In order to analyze the configuration proposed for this plant, the selected case study is a food industry which requires heated air at 150 degrees C (medium range temperature) during a daily operation time 8:30 to 00:00 h, throughout the year. The simulation is conducted under Moroccan meteorological conditions in order to encourage the use of this technology in this country. The design and control of the plant are presented and the simulation results are analyzed on different time bases illustrating energetic and exergetic performance data. The environmental impact has been analyzed by focusing on the amount of CO2 emissions resulting of the natural gas combustion at the auxiliary heater subsystem. Calculations determine that up of 57% of CO2 emissions can be avoided annually by the implementation of the solar plant. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.