Dearden recognised for lifetime achievement

UK: With a career spanning nearly 60 years, Roy Dearden of Manchester-based Kool-it Services is this year’s recipient of the IoR Service Engineers’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award was one of a number of annual awards presented at the Institute of Refrigeration’s Annual Dinner on Thursday at the Grange St Paul’s Hotel, London.

Roy Dearden started in the trade in the late 1950s, working for the Lancashire agent for Temperature on applications from cellar cooling to large Versatemp air conditioning systems. Emigrating to Australia in the early 1960s, Roy worked for Westinghouse, Kelvinator and Frigidaire, servicing their full ranges of refrigeration and air conditioning systems. Returning to England in the late 1960s, he joined Lancashire Refrigeration as senior refrigeration engineer in charge of the cooling system for the world’s first transistorised computer at Manchester University. In 1972 he started Salford Refrigeration, a forerunner to Kool-It.

At the age of 72, Roy still enjoys being on the tools as a service engineer in the family business that now employs eight engineers. He still attends call-outs to the more technically challenging jobs.

He won a cash prize of £400 an engraved tankard and certificate donated by the Student of the Year Award.

Ted Perry Award 

This year’s Ted Perry Award for student research went to Thorsten Spillmann for his work on cost effective solar powered air conditioning using desiccant coated heat exchangers at the University of Warwick.

An award of £500, sponsored by Hawco, and a prize of a set of ASHRAE Databooks is donated to the winner in honour of past president Ted Perry by his family. 

The Kenneth Lightfoot Medal

This year’s award for the best paper presented in the IoR’s annual series of talks went to John Clark and Angus Gillies for their paper on comparison of evaporative and air cooled condensers in industrial applications.

The medal and prize of £500 is donated by Lightfoot Defence in honour of past president of the Institute, Kenneth Lightfoot. 

J&E Hall Gold Medal

Judges for this year’s award for the best practical contribution to the development of RACHP technology had to decide between six nominations spanning research centres and businesses in the Ukraine, USA, Sweden and the UK.

The award went to Ian Tansley, chief technical officer of SureChill, the company behind a vaccine refrigerator that can operate without power for 10 days or more using water-based cooling technology.

J&E Hall International have supported this award consistently for 38 years with an engraved silver replica of the Gold Medal given to the winner as well as prize of £5,000.