Dr Mark McLinden, who spearheaded a globally significant mission to find the next generation of environmentally-conscious refrigerants, has won the prestigious 2019 J & E Hall Gold Medal. The US-based chemical engineer led a team which employed highly-innovative methods to identify the best candidates for the next generation of low-GWP refrigerants.
Dr McLinden was the principal investigator for the ground-breaking five-year project funded by the US Department of Energy. His team applied its combined expertise in chemistry, thermodynamics and refrigeration to the research which has greatly helped the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration and chemical industries to comply with international regulations.
“I am very honoured and somewhat surprised to receive this award,” said Dr McLinden, who is based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. Dr McLinden has been actively engaged in researching new refrigerants for virtually his entire career. He was one of the original developers – with Graham Morrison – of the NIST REFPROP database which has become the standard for refrigerant properties in the industry and which is widely used in the design of refrigeration equipment.
He was heavily involved in the phase out of the ozone-depleting CFC and HCFC refrigerants in the 1990s and the setting of standards for the thermodynamic properties of the then-new HFCs.
