Daniel Otero Meza begins a doctoral research stay at the University of Seville

On 15 December 2022, Daniel Otero Meza arrived at the School of Engineering of the University of Seville for a doctoral research stay that ran until 30 June 2023. He was hosted by the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and supervised by Fernando Vidal Barrero, full professor and director of the university's Chair in Circular Economy. The aim was to advance the design of the integrated assessment tool that would become the core of his thesis in the PhD programme in Energy Engineering at Universidad de la Costa.

The months in Seville produced three lines of work. The first was a baseline of Colombia's waste management system compared with those of the European Union and the OECD, which showed that only 22% of the country's waste goes to recycling or composting and projected a 28% rise in disposal by 2030. The second was a set of SARIMAX and NNARX machine-learning models that anticipate 52.7% growth by 2035. The third was the technical, economic and environmental assessment of landfill gas in seven Colombian cities.

That last study found that the cities analysed could generate between 1.6 MWe and 47.5 MWe of electricity from landfill methane, with projects that are profitable under the incentives of Colombian law. It was published in 2023 in Energy Conversion and Management, a first-quartile journal. The research stay received the top grade, 5.0.

The collaboration with Fernando Vidal Barrero continued afterwards. He co-authored the machine-learning model presented at the First International Congress on Residual Biomass Valorisation, where he also gave a keynote on advanced biogas valorisation, and he signs with group members the national atlas of green hydrogen from landfill gas, published in Hydrogen in 2026, as well as two open datasets on waste disposal and payments to waste pickers.