eurammon’s Natural Refrigeration Award recognises the best scientific dissertation or thesis on the topic of natural refrigerants, an initiative whose goal is to encourage young scientists to work on sustainable refrigeration and air-conditioning solutions. This year, the Natural Refrigeration Award is co-hosted by the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm and ScanRef, the Scandinavian HVACR trade publication.

This year’s Natural Refrigeration Award winners were announced by eurammon, the European initiative for natural refrigerants, at its annual general meeting in Frankfurt on November 15th, 2007. According to the organization’s press release, first place went to Jörg Nickl, who wrote his doctorate on “Development of an expander/compressor for the transcritical refrigeration process with carbon dioxide as refrigerant” at the Technical University of Dresden. Christine Junior, from the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina at Brunswick, won second place with her diploma thesis entitled “Energetic evaluation of different R744 loop concepts”. Arash Soleimani Karimabad, who obtained his MSc from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm with a thesis entitled “Experimental investigations of an ammonia/carbon dioxide cascade system for supermarket refrigeration” came in third.

The winners presented their work to eurammon’s international members and accepted their awards, with prize money totalling €5,000, at the meeting. Thomas Spänich, member of the Executive Board of eurammon, stated: “Operators, designers and manufacturers are greatly interested in refrigeration technology using carbon dioxide, as it is an ideal refrigerant in today’s energy and environmental situation. The winner’s findings all contribute towards making carbon dioxide practical as a refrigerant for an increasing number of applications.”