July’s Rankine 2020 Conference was timed to coincide with the bi-centenary of the birth of Scotland’s William Rankine, a Victorian pioneer in thermodynamics. Hosted by the Institute of Refrigeration (IoR), the event featured a series of webinar presentations exploring advances in refrigeration, air conditioning, heat pump and power generation technology.

Star Refrigeration was one of the main sponsors of the five-day conference, with several key team members presenting technical papers and hosting interactive online discussion sessions. As chair of the IoR conference organisation committee, Star’s managing director Andy Pearson led a series of lectures exploring Rankine’s legacy and introduced the event’s keynote speakers.

Mr Pearson said: “The Rankine 2020 Conference was a highly successful event, with delegates from across the globe taking the opportunity to share experiences and learn from each other. It reinforced my belief that engineering is a great thing to be doing at the moment and our industry is a great place to be doing it.”

The virtual conference featured 75 technical presentations and three keynote addresses. Delegates from across the globe enjoyed live conference presentation and discussion sessions, downloads of technical papers and access to all webinar recordings.

Mr Pearson added: “Although the live UK event could not go ahead, the online format proved very beneficial, with lots of discussion, interaction and debate. With only one presentation taking place at a time, delegates were not forced to choose between sessions running parallel. It was also possible for attendees to listen again to presentation recordings, or catch up later if they were in a different time zone.”

The event’s webinar programme featured the latest research and developments in the closely-related fields of power cycles, working fluids and RACHP applications. Conference delegates gained insights into new ways to deliver energy efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions.

The Rankine 2020 Conference was also designed to attract new talent to the engineering industry. A high number of student papers were submitted, with awards presented to individuals from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Jaume 1 University in Spain and Purdue University, USA.