IChemE Global Awards 2019

Otto Simon • November 13, 2019
On 7th November 2019, more than 400 people from all around the world came together to celebrate engineering excellence at the IChemE Global Awards Dinner. 

Otto Simon was once again proud to sponsor the Research Award, which was presented to the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Energy Storage, together with Chinese firm Jinhe Energy for their ‘NexGen-TEST Project’. Their commercial demonstration plant replaces coal-fired heating boilers with environmentally friendly materials that absorb and release thermal energy from wind power. The plant has harnessed approximately 28,920,000kWh of wind power which would have otherwise been wasted, and has reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 10,000 tonnes since it opened in 2016. This novel technology could be the key to solving a fundamental issue of storing surplus clean energy in the climate change debate. 

The project also won the Energy Award before going on to be presented with IChemE’s coveted Outstanding Achievement Award. 

This year the event was hosted by Warwick Davis (known for his many iconic roles, including appearances in Harry Potter and Star Wars), and held at the DoubleTree Hilton in Hull, UK. As always, it was a fantastic awards evening celebrating excellence, innovation and achievement in the chemical engineering and process industries. As IChemE President Ken Rivers said, “The Global Awards has always managed to distil the best of chemical engineering into one glorious evening, and last night we were able to paint a picture of why and how chemical engineering matters. Congratulations to all the winners.”

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