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Refrigeration research team at ICR 2011
Members of ESBE's Centre for Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Research (CARR) recently attended the 23rd International Congress of Refrigeration (ICR) in PragueThe ICR is organised every 4 years by the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), showcasing cutting edge research and the future of refrigeration. The ESBE team, consisting of both academics and research students and led by Prof Graeme Maidment, Prof Judith Evans and Dr Issa Chaer, presented 12 full conference papers, 2 short presentations of academic posters, organised 4 workshops and chaired 6 sessions.
The conference was a valuable place to find potential partners for future project collaborations and had a very positive effect on the team's motivation, so much so that their attention is already on the next congress, to be held in 2015, in Yokohama.
David Cowan presented work on refrigerant mitigation (Real Zero and the Real Skills Europe) and Tim Brown described the air cycle system model developed as part of the FRISBEE project (Food Refrigeration Innovations for Safety, consumers' Benefit, Environmental impact and Energy optimisation along the cold chain in Europe).
Other researchers presented work that had been carried out as part of their dissertations. Catarina Marques from Adande Refrigeration described the results of the modelling of a thermal storage refrigerator. Edward Hammond presented a paper on the design of the return air curtain in a retail display cabinet. Edward was also awarded the IIR's Clarence Birdseye Prize for outstanding research in the cold chain and refrigerated food science and engineering (see above).
Dan Bibalou and Ina Colombo presented papers and posters focusing respectively on life cycle assessment of refrigerated display cabinets and natural refrigeration systems with heat recovery for retail applications.
Judith Evans, Tim Brown, Edward Hammond and Alan Foster organised a successful workshop to disseminate information from the European ICE-E project (Improving Cold storage Equipment in Europe) and were involved in the FRISBEE workshop focussing on new tools concepts and solutions for improving refrigeration technologies along the European food cold chain.
Graeme Maidment chaired the Sustainable Innovation in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning workshop entitled "Drivers for success in sustainable technology development" based on the principle of the "Dragons' Den" TV programme. This provided an innovative and exciting session with critical and challenging questioning of technology advocates by a team of business experts.
Ina Colombo and Catarina Marques ran the first Students and Young Researchers Network sponsored by the IIR and the UK Institute of Refrigeration (IOR). Speed networking was the main activity of this event where young researchers had the opportunity to interact with the world's leading experts from the refrigeration industry.
Judith Evans attended the IIR management meetings as the UK's representative of the IIR. Several other team members attended IIR commission meetings (C2, food science and technology; D1, retail display) and were part of IIR working parties (energy labelling, refrigeration mitigation).