Terrie Lamb honoured by IOR

The Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) once again recognised outstanding industry achievement at its annual dinner in London.

Five awards were presented by IOR President Graeme Fox, including the RACHP Engineering Technician Section Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by ACR Journal, which went to Terrie Lamb of CiMetrics.

This award is made to an individual who has spent their whole career in a hands-on role, having displayed exceptional dedication to their customers, employers and their sector. The judges said: “Terrie has gone on to achieve a Level 3 NVQ and his Engineering Council EngTech registration.

"He has demonstrated a passion for the RACHP industry with not only impressive continued professional development, but also by proactively passing his extensive knowledge on to apprentices. His enthusiasm for sharing knowledge, mentoring younger engineers and his determination to help fill the skills gap is clear to see. He is also active in supporting the industry outside of his job commitments as Vice Chair of CIBSE HSCE Region.”

The new Beyond Refrigeration Environmental Award went to Northamptonshire-based Sustain, above, for its work on Circular Economy for the Cooling Industry. The judges said: “Sustain’s approach provides a game-changing solution to the management of ageing commercial refrigeration assets to ensure zero to landfill by focusing on the reuse of parts from waste, repairing for reuse, repurposing the foam to avoid incineration, and ensuring recycling routes offer true circular economy.

"Their end-to-end process is making a significant impact in reducing carbon emissions and VOCs from foam incineration, from their own processing that uses renewable resources and from their sustainable process for reusable steel re-manufacturing. The approach has helped to save 12,897 tonnes CO2 emissions over the past 12 months, returned 156,302 kW energy to the National Grid from the waste plant and diverted an estimated 4,704 tonnes of industry waste from landfill by dismantling and recycling over 17,000 refrigeration cabinets.''

The J&E Hall Gold Medal recognises the most noteworthy practical contribution to the field of innovation in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump technology. This year’s winner is Professor Yulong Ding for his contribution to storing and managing renewable energy.  Using liquid energy storage, the technologies he has developed are already being used commercially in cold chain applications and cooled containers, as well as energy facilities such as Highview Power in Birmingham. The judges agreed that they have tremendous potential for the future.

Yulong Ding is the founding Chamberlain Chair of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham and Director of Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage and of UoB-AnSteel Joint Centre for Industrial Decarbonisation Technologies.

Elias Eid, now a researcher at Food Chain London South Bank University, was honoured with the Ted Perry Award for Student Research for his work on reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from the retail sector in Europe. The judges highlighted his work as “having improved international understanding of how the retail food sector can effectively achieve decarbonisation and shift towards a net-zero carbon.  This holistic approach is providing a clear path towards understanding of individual energy and carbon reduction potentials across various scenarios and countries.”  

The Lightfoot Medal awarded for the best IOR talk and paper of the 2022/23 session went to Robert Unsworth for his paper Is money best spent on efficient design or service in refrigeration? Sponsored by Lightfoot Defence, this award is decided by a vote of IOR members. The winning paper and a recording of the presentation are available here. 

Yulong Ding, Elias Eid and Sustain have been invited to give talks to IOR members in the next papers programme to share their work in more detail with the RACHP Community.

To find out more about the awards and how to enter for next year, visit https://bit.ly/IORAwards