Lucas Vélez
Consultant
Areas of Expertise: Environmental regulatory compliance; environmental engineering; solid and liquid waste management; process optimization; air quality; wastewater treatment; data science; renewable energy
Education/Certifications: B.S. Environmental Engineering, EIA University, Envigado, Colombia; fluent in English, Spanish, French
Lucas is an Environmental Engineer with specialized experience in solid and liquid waste management and process optimization. He has worked at some of the largest breweries in Latin America developing systems to quantify the amounts of solid and liquid residue produced in each of the plants. At KTL, Lucas provides project support in these areas, as well as general environmental management (e.g., air quality, wastewater treatment, renewable energy), program development, and compliance support services across KTL’s client portfolio.
Lucas has valuable knowledge of various engineering processes and uses this to optimize quality and efficiency on projects. He excels at deploying environmental procedures and standards that address regulatory requirements and company policies and initiatives. His background includes the following highlights on projects in Colombia and Chile:
- Developing a computer model to measure the production of solid waste and to implement new environmental standards, which reduced waste management costs by roughly 1.5%.
- Participating in the creation of an app to optimize electrical consumption in production plant lines, reducing overall energy consumption by approximately 0.5%, resulting in cost savings close to 100,000 USD yearly.
- Implementing and leading an internal training program to reduce the internal waste disposal in the plant’s production lines and offices.
- Designing and building a system to quantify liquid waste in a soda production plant to evaluate the effectiveness of the water treatment plant.
- Testing physical and chemical properties (e.g., biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD)) of the plant’s raw materials and products to predict and avoid critical scenarios in the residual wastewater treatment systems.
- Providing onsite supervision and troubleshooting issues for wastewater treatment system operations.
In addition to his technical expertise in environmental compliance and engineering, Lucas excels at leveraging information technology to assess and further develop environmental programs. His work at KTL includes providing support to KTL’s clients in developing data and document management systems to improve environmental regulatory compliance.
Lucas received his B.S. in Environmental Engineering from EIA University in Envigado, Colombia. He is fluent in English and Spanish and has advanced proficiency in French.