ASHRAE Florida West Coast Chapter Member Wins First Kirk T. Mescher Award

From eSociety, August 2017

By Mary Kate McGowan, Associate Editor, News

ASHRAE Fellow Kirk T. Mescher, P.E.’s innovative legacy continues through a younger ASHRAE member's work.

Mehdi Zeyghami, Student Member ASHRAE, is the first recipient of the Kirk T. Mescher Award, which awards innovative engineering strategie

At the Clean Energy Research Center at the University of South Florida, Zeyghami, a member of the ASHRAE Florida West Coast Chapter, is developing a passive cooling system that uses radiation heat transfer. His research's focus is developing a nanostructured body capable of radiative cooling in daytime and nighttime.

Zeyghami's master's thesis included the modeling and optimization of a ground source heat pump (GSHP) with vertical closed loop heat exchanger with the goal of developing a simulation code to calculate the optimum length of the ground heat exchangers considering the actual capital and installation costs.

Mescher was an innovative engineer who specialized in HVAC. He started ground source heat pump design in 1993, before ASHRAE published the system's design criteria, according to TC 6.8, Geothermal Heat Pump and Energy Recovery Applications.

TC 6.8 credits Mescher with developing the one pipe distribution system for GSHP systems and extended its application from individual building to campus scale, along with other achievements.

Joining ASHRAE in 1979, Mescher devoted 26 years to the Society including various leadership positions including director-at-large for the Board of Directors.

Mescher won the Distinguished Service Award in 2009 and the Exceptional Service Award. In 2014, he was named an ASHRAE Fellow. He died in 2015.

In his memory, the award is written for practicing engineers, teaching faculty or students who have ideas for an elegant way to be more energy efficient. The grant helps the winners test their ideas or put them into practice.