The IOR co-sponsored the 11^th biennial International Conference on Compressors and their Systems which was held from 11^th to 13^th September at City, University of London. The IOR Technical Committee Chairman David Paget FInstR also took part and presented awards to students.

Chaired by Professor Ahmed Kovacevic (right), 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 world experts. Prof. Andreas Brummer talked about “Leakage Losses in Twin Screw Machines” on the first day, Prof Yunho Hwang challenged us in the second plenary session with the talk on “Compression without Compressors” and Prof Mehrdad Zangeneh gave a keynote on the Industry day about the design system for centrifugal chillers with low GWP refrigerants. 

Technical Program

94 papers were presented in 23 parallel sessions during the first two days of the conference. 85 of these papers were published by the renowned Institute of Physics’ (IOP) Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering and 11 papers published by the Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering. There were 24 papers submitted and presented by students.

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

The best papers and presentations received the following awards:

• Best Technical Paper Award presented to Tadayoshi Shoyama et al., Panasonic Corporation, Japan, received from the Chief Executive of IMechE for the paper: ‘Novel Turbo Compressor for Heat Pump Using Water as Refrigerant and Lubricant’.
• Best Student Paper awarded to Xinye Zhang et al. from Purdue University, received from David Paget, Chair of the Technical Committee of the Institute of Refrigeration; for the paper: ‘Numerical Analysis of Gas Bearings in Oil-free Linear Compressors’
• Best Student Presentation awarded to Christian Stoeckel from TU Dresden, received from Prof Eckhard Groll, representing the International Institution of Refrigeration for the paper: ‘Experimental testing of pneumatically forced actuated compressor-expander valves’. 

Industry Day

The 3^rd day of the conference was dedicated to industrial presentations where eight world-leading experts talked about their company’s journey and industrial challenges. Mr Jack Sauls, talked about his experiences with refrigeration compressors while Howden Compressors presented their augmented reality system for monitoring their compressors.

Industry day was sponsored by renowned trade journal COMPRESSORTech2

Short Course & Forum

Use of CFD tools and detailed analysis has gained significant momentum in recent years. The fourth Short Course and Forum on CFD in rotary positive displacement machines was held on 7-8 September 2019 discussing multiphase flow modelling methods and leakage flow investigations delivered by 16 lecturers, to 54 delegates attending the course.

Some of the presented materials are published by the MDPI Journal Designs in their Special Issue on CFD in rotary positive displacement machines.

Social Program

Alongside the technical program, a number of social events were held to allow delegates to network and enjoy the conference starting with the Welcome Reception at the City Bar.

The conference Gala Dinner was hosted on the first day at the exquisite Royal Horseguards Hotel; a venue rich in history and a Victorian masterpiece, located on the city’s Embankment with views of the River Thames. The guest speaker was the Baroness Brown of Cambridge, Julia King who talked about the very topical subject of climate change, the challenges of addressing climate change and what that means for the compressor industry.

At the end of the second day, and with popular demand, a social event was held at St Bart’s Brewery with live music by The Hot Keys and Joe Perkins, alumni of City, University of London. The best paper awards were presented at this social event.

Ten companies exhibited at the conference including the sponsors, Gamma Technologies (demonstrating GT-SUITE) and PDM Analysis (demonstrating SCORG). The latter two companies also held seminars and demo session of their software which can be integrated to allow fast simulation of screw machines.

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.

Details of the next Conference in 2021 will be added in due course.