Can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your project?

I am Ricardo Baguena, head of communications at the company Cerian Shower. It is made up of three vocational training teachers, Ángel Almodóvar and Cesar González, together with myself, and the three of us saw that there was a leak in the houses being built in the 21st century through which energy was escaping: the drain in every shower. We started looking to see if there was a system that could easily recover that energy and reintroduce it back into the energy use cycle of houses. We looked all over Europe, the United States, Canada, and eventually we discovered that some products were able to do this recovery, but those products were very difficult to install in all dwellings, for example in residential buildings. There were very large solutions of metres high that were suitable for single-family homes, but for the great majority, the great mass, it was not easy. Apart from the fact that they were very expensive products, therefore the payback period for the investment was very long, thus shaping an issue in achieving what we were aiming for, which was that everyone, whether in single-family houses or in horizontal housing buildings, could benefit from this type of saving. As we were not able to find the device we needed, we developed the idea and we made a very small heat recovery device, which is only a few millimetres long, which can be inserted into a shower tray or into the floor of any bathroom, in any type of home all over the world. In this way, energy can be recovered in a simple way in all homes.

It is very simple: we have a thermostatic tap, I set the temperature to 38°C and it regulates the mixture of hot and cold water to the temperature I have requested. This 38°C water, when falling on the heat exchanger, heats the cold water coming from the street to about 10°C and passes the energy to it, and makes the cold water enter the tap at about 20°C. And mixing 20 with 60 is better than mixing 10 with 60, so there is automatically an energy recovery.

When and how did you come up with the idea?

The first idea came from Cesar González, the most experienced partner in energy recovery, because in 2007 he had already developed a machine that recovered all the energy from hot water in the shower. This hot water was introduced into a tank and then a heat pump was used to extract energy from it and reuse it, but it was a somewhat complex system in terms of water control, electronic valve control. So, when it came to installing it in all dwellings, we also had a problem.

Based on this idea, we went the other way, to a system where the user did not have to carry out any operation. The user just showers as if they didn't have this system, and they actually recover. We have gone from a system controlled by an automaton to a system that has no control whatsoever, that is not plugged in anywhere. The user doesn't do anything special, they just get in the shower, take a shower and leave. And in that normal act, just like when there is nothing, it recovers 40% of the energy.

We started this last system at the end of 2017, when we created the company, and from then on we evolved, producing a multitude of exchanger models, testing how to integrate it, until in the end we achieved a product that integrates quite easily and has a fairly good recovery.

The easiest way is for it to be installed when the developer builds the house, buys the product and installs it, but it can also be used in bathroom renovations or when replacing bathtubs with showers. Many bathtubs are being removed due to accessibility issues for the elderly, and in this change for a shower we can insert the product.

How is the award you have won and the incubation with IDEA Alzira going to help your project, and what are the next steps?

The EcoRes prize has helped us in many ways. In principle, the most striking aspect is always the economic part because in the end money is needed in all companies to develop any product and in this sense the economic prize has helped us to be able to buy more machinery, to be able to manufacture our product better, faster and more effectively. Because what we are also trying to do is to ensure that the product is not an elite product; everyone has to recover this energy because it makes no sense to throw it down the drain. So we need to have a product at a price where the investment is recovered in 3 or 3.5 years. And in this way everybody will be able to install it.

On the other hand, all the training we received from the EcoRes award helped us to progress as a company in terms of structure, to know what we need, and what we need to go to the market. Because we are in the Spanish market but the idea is to go out to the European market soon, as it's a market that requires energy because it's colder, and even more so now with the whole energy issue in Europe. So we need to go out into this market, and that's why we need to be a bit more prepared.

And finally, it has also helped us to make the problem of energy loss in homes more visible, for we need people to know that they have this problem, because we don't realise that we are throwing energy down the drain. So the award helps us a little bit on a European level, to make people aware that they are throwing money down the drain. We need the public to ask for products that recover energy, that make them more environmentally friendly, and at the same time help them save money.

These are the 3 aspects of the prize: the economic aspect, the educational aspect and the communication aspect, which we believe is very important. Because when a customer goes to their developer and says "I want a house with a shower tray that recovers energy", then we will have reached a place where everyone knows what they are doing. We all know that it makes no sense to have the heating on with the windows open. In the same way, it makes no sense to pour energy down the drain, so we need a lot of communication work, and the EcoRes award has helped us a lot in this respect as well.

It doesn't necessarily have to be our product, it can be any product from the European competition of our colleagues because we belong to the European Association of Greywater Energy Recovery Equipment, which is based in France. The important thing is that these products are adopted as part of the progress towards a circular economy.

How do you see your contribution to waste reduction efforts and/or a more circular economy?

We think that circular economy has to be present in all people's actions and at the end as users we have to use all the products that make this circular economy possible, both at the level of how we make the products and at the end of how we use them in our homes, and finally how we can get rid of them when they have finished their useful life. You have to look at whether they can be easily recycled or not, you have to look at the whole life cycle of the product from when they are made, their use and their recyclability.

In principle, we focus on circular economy through circular energy, because in the end what we do is to reintroduce this energy into the cycle, and we think that people have to use these products because the user and society as a whole will benefit, which is what we are all interested in. That everyone, without much effort, uses circular equipment that helps everyone: the environment, society, all the people, against waste, helping to make ends meet, to fight against energy poverty. We have to help people to use their money well: if they have already paid once for energy, why should they pay twice? Let them use that energy again and pay only once for it.

We are also investigating how we make the product, with what energy, the whole part of responsibility we have for what we do.