Description of the institution
The Vertech Group was founded specifically to help small and medium sized businesses to make improvements through the adoption of more efficient use of resources, environmentally friendly working practices and the use of cleaner and more sustainable technologies. Vertech Group is a start-up engineering consulting company that focuses its business on providing advanced environmental and sustainable solutions for different sectors (i.e., eco-friendly products, water and land management, bio-industry, LCA, energy and industrial waste) together with a solid innovation transferring plan of R&D&I in order to support small-medium enterprises to formulate their own R&D capacities despite of their company size. Vertech-group if one of the first SMEs to obtain the European regulation on eco-design.
Previous Experience
Vertech-Group has wide experience on the development of Life-Cycle Assessment of products and processes according to ISO 14040-14043, and economic feasibility analysis of innovative eco-friendly products, through different methodologies and tools, such as Life Cycle Costs, TLV (Technology life cycle methodology), etc.
Vertech-Group is currently involved in several FP7 projects, such as: FWW “ Liquid and gas Fischer-Tropsch fuel production from olive industry waste: fuel from waste”, INNOBITE “Transforming urban and agricultural residues into high performance biomaterials for green construction”, “NOSHAN: Sustainable Production of Functional and Safe Feed from Food Waste”, etc.
Role in the project
In GRAIL project, Vertech-Group activities will be aimed to supporting developed processes/transformation technologies and glycerol-based products taking into account financial and ecological aspects to foster sustainability. In this context, Vertech-Group activities will be mainly focused on WP6: LCA and Economic Feasibility.
Key personnel
Erasmo Cadena: Mr. Erasmo Cadena has a PhD in Environmental Science from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), specialized in Biotechnology. He holds a MSc. in Environmental Engineering. He works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge-UK, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (BarcelonaTech) and National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has experience in international research initiatives (participating in European projects and publishing scientific papers) and his research interests include: new materials; life cycle assessment (applied at different sectors); technical, environmental and economic analysis; climate change studies; bioremediation systems; biofuels from different feedstock; anaerobic digestion; gaseous emissions mitigation; and solid waste management.
Paola Castrillo: Mrs. Paola Castrillo has a Science and Materials Engineering PhD from Carlos III he University of Madrid. From 2004 to the present she has been active in the preparation, management, coordination and development of various R & D projects in the areas of European development and application of new materials (INNOBITE, TECNOCAI, DINATER, NANOTER), improved energy efficiency in buildings:
(S4EeB) and sustainability (FFW). Currently working as Commercial Manager for Vertech Group while at the same time actively participates in different R & D projects.
Jesus Antonio Barona: Mr Barona is a Civil Engineer (PUJ), M.Sc on Innovation and Optimized Systems (IETcc), M.Sc. in Project Management (UPM) and MBA. Mr. Barona counts with Wide experience on engineering, field and consultancy related to the energy and environmental sector, together with the coordination of FP7 international research and development funded projects. In the past, as Head of the R&D Group, Mr. Barona has participated in more than 100 international R&D project projects and over 30 running projects (i.e. FP7, IEE, Life+, Ecoinnovation, Eureka, Japan-Spain International partnership programme (JSIP), Eurostars, among others).