The 115th Annual Dinner of the Institute of Refrigeration took place on 19 February at the Grange St Pauls Hotel, with 440 guests in attendance.
The 115th Annual Dinner of the Institute of Refrigeration took place on 19 February at the Grange St Pauls Hotel, with 440 guests in attendance.
The Service Engineers Section Lifetime Achievement Award went to Ian Sullivan of Sullivan Air Conditioning has has worked in the industry for 43 years. He began his career with an apprenticeship at Indair in 1971. Today he runs his own business as a self-employed service engineer, sub-contracting to several different companies, and carrying out trouble shooting on air conditioning systems or water chiller. He was presented with a cash prize and commemorative tankard donated by the ACR Trainee of the Year award, for outstanding service to the industry.
Winner of the Ted Perry Award for student research this year was Angeles Rivero-Pacho, a student at the University of Warwick, whose project involved modelling, design, construction and testing of a carbon-ammonia adsorption heat pump which has significantly improved the heat transfer rates achievable. The research was described by one of the judges as “a practical research project with a high potential for commercial exploitation.” Angeles was presented with a cash prize by Hawco and a set of ASHRAE databooks from the Perry Family Memorial Trust.
The programme of evening papers presented at the Institute is designed to showcase new developments and case studies of innovation that will impact our industry in the future. This year IOR members were invited to vote for their choice of the best paper in the session to be presented with the Lightfoot Medal for best paper. The winners were Tom Davies, Robin Campbell and Varun Thangamani for their presentation “A novel low energy defrost process for the frozen food chain”. A cash prize and medal was donated by Lightfoot Defence. Their paper can be read on the IOR website, which also includes a webinar of the talk.
International recognition for outstanding practical contribution is made through the IOR’s J&E Hall Gold Medal. This award allows the Institute to bring world-class innovators to the UK to present on their field of work. It has been supported by J&E Hall International consistently for 37 years. This year’s winner was Dr Reinhard Radermacher, director and co-founder of the Center for Environmental Energy Engineering at the University of Maryland (pictured above receiving his award).
Dr Radermacher has been pushing the research frontiers by exploring new technologies and developing them for real life applications, and is a world authority on energy efficiency and environmentally sustainable thermal systems research. The simulation packages developed under his direction are used by more than 60 organisations worldwide and have helped to enable researchers, policy makers and designers to analyse life cycle estimate of natural and low GWP refrigerants. Dr Radermacher will return to the UK in the autumn to give a talk on his work.
Nominations for next year’s awards are now open. For more information visit the website at www.ior.org.uk.