The Institute of Refrigeration (IOR)’s 116th annual Dinner took place on 25 February at The Grange St Pauls Hotel, in London.
The event promotes achievement and innovation in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump applications through a number of annual awards. The awards reflect the contribution of individuals at different stages in their career and in different roles.
The Ted Perry Award is designed to encourage and promote research by students related to refrigeration and air conditioning. An award of £500 is made, sponsored by Hawco Ltd, and a prize of a set of ASHRAE Databooks is donated to the winner in honour of the Past President Ted Perry by his family. This year’s award was presented to Thorsten Spillmann for his research into cost effective solar powered air conditioning using desiccant coated heat exchangers at the University of Warwick. Thorsten will give a talk on his work to members next year as part of the SIRACH research and innovation programme. 
The IOR Service Engineers' Section makes a lifetime achievement award to recognise an individual's commitment to a career in service, maintenance or installation engineering. This year's winner was Roy Dearden of Kool-it Services Ltd.
He started working in the refrigeration industry in the late 1950s as an apprentice in air conditioning and small systems and moved on to larger systems such as food spiral freezing. He has worked on everything including ships, packs and large air conditioning system. He was there for the beginning of data centre cooling when he worked on Manchester University’s Atlas Computer’s cooling system. At the age of 72 he is still enjoys being on the tools as a service engineer in the family business he started over 40 years ago. His business has trained many apprentices and he is extremely proud of their success, keeping in touch with them as they progress in their career. The award prizes were donated by The Trainee of the Year Award.
The Kenneth Lightfoot Medal for an IOR published paper is decided by IOR members who vote on line for the best paper and presentation in the annual series of talks. The medal and prize is donated by Lightfoot Defence in honour of the Past President of the Institute, Kenneth Lightfoot. This year's winners were John Clark and Angus Gillies for their paper on comparison of evaporative and air cooled condensers in industrial applications.
The J&E Hall Gold Medal for international innovation is awarded for practical contribution to the development of RACHP technology. It is international in scope and recognises the most noteworthy practical contribution to the science of refrigeration. This year there were six nominations spanning research centres and businesses in the Ukraine, USA, Sweden and the UK. The award was won by to Ian Tansley, chief technical officer of SureChill Company Limited.
Ian has becomes a leading figure in the renewable energy industry where he is addressing the issue of providing reliable cooling with an intermittent or erratic power supply. He will give a paper detailing the technology and its potential for commercial application in a free talk to IOR members next year.