Highlights From Conference On Compressors

The final report on the 11^th biennial International Conference on Compressors and their Systems, organized by the Centre for Compressor Technology and held at City, University of London, United Kingdom, last fall, was recently issued. The event was supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) and the Institute of Refrigeration (IOR).

Chaired by Prof. Ahmed Kovacevic, Howden Chair in Engineering Design and Compressor Technology, the conference was attended by over 250 registered delegates from 24 countries. 

The tone of the conference was set by keynotes from three experts. Prof. Andreas Brummer talked about “Leakage Losses in Twin Screw Machines” on the first day, Prof. Yunho Hwang opened the second plenary session with a talk on “Compression without Compressors” and Prof. Mehrdad Zangeneh’s industry day keynote highlighted design systems for centrifugal chillers with low GWP refrigerants. 

Sessions were organized in streams, including screw compressors, reciprocating compressors, valve design, vane compressors, novel compressors, two-phase effects in expander operation, compressor systems and turbomachinery.

Over the first two days of the conference, 94 papers were presented in 23 parallel sessions. Of that total, 85 were published by the Institute of Physics’ (IOP) Conference Series – Materials Science and Engineering and 11 papers were presented by the Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering. Students submitted and presented 24 papers.

The best papers and presentations were honored as follows:

-The Best Technical Paper Award went to Tadayoshi Shoyama, et al., of Panasonic Corp., Japan, for the paper ‘Novel Turbo Compressor for Heat Pump Using Water as Refrigerant and Lubricant.’

-The Best Student Paper award went to Xinye Zhang, et al., of Purdue University, for the paper: ‘Numerical Analysis of Gas Bearings in Oil-free Linear Compressors.’

-The Best Student Presentation was by Christian Stoeckel of TU Dresden for the paper ‘Experimental Testing of Pneumatically Forced Actuated Compressor-Expander Valves.’ 

The third day of the conference was dedicated to industrial presentations in which eight experts talked about their companies’ journey and industrial challenges. Jack Sauls, who spent 40 years at Trane, talked about his experiences with refrigeration compressors while Howden Compressors presented its augmented reality system for monitoring compressors. Industry day was sponsored by COMPRESSORTECH².

The fourth Short Course and Forum on CFD in rotary positive displacement machines was held in conjunction with the conference. The Short Course focused on multiphase flow modeling methods and leakage flow investigations and included presentations by 16 lecturers delivered to 54 attending delegates. Some of the presented materials were published by the MDPI Journal Designs in its special issue on CFD in rotary positive displacement machines.

Ten companies exhibited at the conference including sponsors Holroyd Precision (platinum), Howden (gold) and Kapp Niles, Samputensili Machine Tools Srl, Convergent Science, FeTu, and Vert Rotors (silver sponsors).

A Poster Exhibition was also organised to showcase research from the Thermo-fluids Research Centre at City, University of London. Display of 40 research posters reflected the various national and international collaborations over a wide range of engineering sectors receiving funding from the European Union, EPSRC, Innovate UK as well as the industry.

Alongside the technical program, a number of social events were held to allow delegates to network. The conference Gala Dinner, sponsored by Megger, was hosted on the first day at the Royal HorseguardsHotel. The guest speaker was Julia King, the Baroness Brown of Cambridge, who talked about the challenges of addressing climate change and what that means for the compressor industry.