Terrie Lamb wins lifetime achievement award

UK: Terrie Lamb of Cimetrics was recognised for 25 years of dedication to the RACHP sector in a night of awards at Thursday night’s annual Institute of Refrigeration (IoR) dinner.

Lamb’s receipt of the RACHP Engineering Technician Lifetime Achievement Award was one of a number of awards presented at the dinner in London, including the Ted Perry Memorial Award, J&E Hall Gold Medal, Lightfoot Medal and the IoR’s new Beyond Refrigeration Environment award.

The RACHP Engineering Technician Lifetime Achievement Award award is presented 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. Lamb’s nomination was described by IoR president Graeme Fox as one of the most outstanding ever received.

Starting off in duct work before moving into the RACHP sector, Terrie Lamb has pursued a successful and varied career which has included spells with a number of leading companies, gaining multiple certifications and qualifications in renewable, ventilation, and IAQ technologies.

“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” said Graeme Fox.

J&E Hall Gold Medal

Yulong Ding, chamberlain professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham won the J & E Hall Gold Medal. The award celebrates his development of passively cooled containers which has incredible potential on reducing direct and indirect emissions.

Beyond Refrigeration Environment award

The first IoR Beyond Refrigeration Environment award was won by Northamptonshire-based Sustain – sister company of DCS – for its True Circular Economy for the Cooling Industry project.

This new award seeks to highlight practical achievements made by businesses in projects that demonstrate measurable carbon emissions reduction and illustrate the principles of the IoR’s beyond refrigeration environmental work.

Sustain’s approach provides a 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, re-purposing the foam to avoid incineration, and ensuring recycling routes offer true circular economy. 

The company’s end-to-end process is said to be 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 156,302kW energy to the National Grid and diverted an estimated 4,704 tonnes of industry waste from landfill by dismantling and recycling over 17,000 refrigeration cabinets.

A highly commended certificate was awarded to a project between Tesco, Star Refrigeration and Star Data Analytics to achieve energy reductions and maximised efficiency across Tesco’s distribution centre estate.

Star Data Analytics’ Ethos solution, which uses real time data collection and AI technology to identify and implement improvements has helped Tesco achieve a 10% energy saving and a reduction of 835 tonnes of CO2 emissions over the past 21 months with a return on investment of just under three months. 

Ted Perry Memorial Award

The Ted Perry Memorial Award for the most promising research by a PhD or undergraduate student went to Elias Eid of London South Bank University for his work on reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from the retail sector in Europe.

Eid’s work is said to have improved international understanding of how the retail food sector can effectively achieve decarbonisation and shift towards a net-zero carbon. 

Lightfoot Medal

Awarded for the best technical paper presentation, the Lightfoot Medal went to Robert Unsworth for his paper Is money best spent on energy efficient design or maintenance?