Global Health EngineeringOpen OpportunitiesBlack soldier fly larvae (BSFL) are increasingly used for organic waste recycling and animal feed production. They can be used on a broad variety of organic waste products like market or food waste or faeces and manure. BSFL treatment produces two products, larvae which can be used as animal feed and frass which consists of insect excrements and indigestible organic residues. Frass is still rich in nitrogen and carbohydrates and is being composted before being used as a soil amendment. However; the frass might also be usable as a substrate for growing mushrooms and therefore used to create more value for the BSFL facility. The goal of this work is to test if BSFL frass is a good substrate for growing mushrooms or can help as an additive to another substrate increase mushroom yields. This work will take place in cooperation with EAWAG which is a leading institute working on BSFL waste treatment. - Environmental Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis, Semester Project
| Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), scientifically known as Hermetia illucens, have emerged as a promising solution for organic waste recycling and sustainable animal feed production. These remarkable insects possess the ability to convert a wide range of organic materials into valuable biomass, rich in proteins and lipids. However, their efficiency is somewhat limited when it comes to processing complex carbohydrates, particularly those found in lignocellulosic waste. In contrast to BSFL, white-rot fungi (WRF) possess a unique set of ligninolytic enzymes that enable them to degrade lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose effectively. The goal of this research is to explore how pretreatment of lignocellulosic waste using white-rot fungi can increase the availability of nutrients for BSFL in the pretreated substrates. - Environmental Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis, Semester Project
| Invegrow Ltd is the first producer of medical cannabis and industrial hemp in Malawi, which sells products locally, regionally, and internationally. Invegrow lobbied the Malawian government for 7 years, before the Cannabis Act (2020), allowing for the cultivation/processing of cannabis for industrial and medical purposes. Their current facility has a capability of drying around 2500 kg of dried flower and will expand in 2026. The flower hang drying system is not automated and needs review to come up with a turnkey solution for slowly hang drying the flower, avoiding the development of molds by managing the climate in the chambers and the air flow in and out of the chambers. The current system functions well, but with the expansion planned, a more automated one will be required. An engineering student shall help to work with the equipment and existing system (dehumidifiers, humidifiers, extractor fans, floor fans) to optimize it and improve on it. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Invegrow Ltd is the first producer of medical cannabis and industrial hemp in Malawi, which sells products locally, regionally, and internationally. Invegrow lobbied the Malawian government for 7 years, before the Cannabis Act (2020), allowing for the cultivation/processing of cannabis for industrial and medical purposes. Invegrow’s current hemp foods facility has proven that hemp food can be produced with good quality processing equipment from Turkey (desheller and oil expeller). Invegrow currently produces hemp seed oil, hemp protein powder, shelled seeds, hemp cosmetic oil, CBD flowers, CBD infused honey, CBD oils, and soon CBD gummies (legally, licensed by the Cannabis Regulatory Authority; sold in Malawi). They intend to expand into hemp based ‘ready to use supplementary foods’ (RUSFs) to help combat the malnutrition in Africa and will produce the grain with Malawian companies/farmers/universities to get the grain needed to process into these foods.
A purpose-built food facility must be designed to cater to the ISO 22000 standards. The building must take into consideration the floor space for the equipment needed, waste management, climate control, cold room and storage. The student should help finalize the paperwork for the ISO certification for current and future products and provide process flow diagrams. Invegrow will also need to assess how much more equipment is needed, as the facility grows. - Civil Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| ArtMal, established in 2020 by Manota Mphande, is a social enterprise focused on environmental and sustainability initiatives based in Malawi, Blantyre. The organization has carried out extensive cleanup efforts through the Mudi River Cleanup Project, where it collects various forms of waste. This initiative has inspired the repurposing of collected materials; for instance, cloth is transformed into school bags, while plastic waste is processed using Precious Plastic technology to create desks.
ArtMal engages individuals from the informal sector in collecting waste HDPE plastics, providing them with income and employment opportunities. The process involves sorting, washing, and shredding the plastic, which is then transformed into sheets using locally built Precious Plastic Machinery. These sheets are subsequently assembled onto frames to produce complete desks, contributing to both waste reduction and community development.
ArtMal has been actively engaged in the production and sale of high-quality plastic sheets for several months. As part of our operations, we routinely use HDPE bottles to streamline our processes. However, we are facing significant challenges with the cleaning of these bottles. The current cleaning method is proving to be inefficient, taking an excessive amount of time to ensure that each bottle is thoroughly cleaned and ready for reuse. This delay is impacting our production schedules and overall workflow, prompting us to seek more effective cleaning solutions to enhance efficiency and maintain our quality standards.
As the business continues to grow, ArtMal is seeking a skilled and dedicated engineering student to design a low-cost, easy-to-use, and effective cleaning technology for HDPE bottles that are subsequently shredded to produce plastic sheets. This role will focus on implementing more effective and quicker cleaning solutions to enhance efficiency and maintain our quality standards. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Dark fermentation involves the hydrolysis and acidogenesis of carbon-rich substrates to produce hydrogen (energy) as the main product and volatile fatty acids (acetic acid, butyric acid and propionic acid) as byproducts. Reactor configuration is an important parameter that influences the production rate and yield. The Anaerobic Baffled Reactor (ABR) is a simple design with minimal costs and fosters the separation of different phases of the anaerobic process thus enhancing the resilience of the bacterial population to fluctuations of the organic loading rate. Additionally, the reactor can be designed in household modular settings and built underground to retain heat. The ABR has been evaluated for anaerobic digestion of high-strength wastewater (Sayedin et al., 2018, 2019) and to a lesser extent, for the anaerobic digestion of solid waste such as food waste. There are only a few studies on the use of ABR for dark fermentation (e.g. Jürgensen et al., 2015). Therefore, it is important to understand how ABR configuration can be modified for dark fermentation, particularly for processing solid waste. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| The black soldier fly (BSF) (Hermetia illucens) is a globally distributed insect renowned for its role in sustainable waste bioconversion and protein production. Its larvae efficiently convert organic waste into nutrient-rich biomass for animal feed and fertilizer, while adults are non-pestilent and do not transmit diseases. Neonates (newly hatched larvae) are critical for industrial-scale insect farming, but their small size (~1 mm) and sensitivity to environmental conditions make manual counting labor-intensive and error-prone. Developing an automated neonate counting mechanism can help the growing BSF farms to optimize production efficiency, improve breeding accuracy, and support scalable solutions for circular agriculture systems. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Article 6 of the Paris Agreement promotes international cooperation, allowing high-income countries to meet carbon reduction goals affordably by funding projects in lower-income countries and claiming the resulting offsets. Under its CO₂ Act, Switzerland, through the KliK Foundation, aims to offset 40 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030—10% of its national emissions—over half of which will occur abroad. One planned collaboration with Malawi involves distributing 10,000 household biogas digesters to dairy farmers2, expected to mitigate 436,000 tonnes of CO₂e. These digesters convert organic waste, primarily animal dung, into methane-rich biogas, replacing wood as a cooking fuel and reducing emissions from deforestation and biomass burning.
Dr. Natalie Boyd Williams, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Global Health Engineering group at ETH Zurich, is seeking a student for an exciting Masters thesis project. Dr. Boyd Williams' fellowship focuses on assessing the efficacy of the Malawi biogas project's carbon savings, which hinge on households effectively and consistently using biogas as their primary cooking fuel over firewood. Accurately estimating biogas usage is critical to understanding the project's impact. Traditional methods, such as surveys, often rely on users recalling their cooking habits over long periods, introducing significant uncertainty and error. This thesis aims to address these limitations by developing and trialing a citizen science biogas usage estimation methodology that complements surveys, improving the accuracy of usage data. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis, Semester Project
| Black carbon (BC) is a critical component of atmospheric aerosols, with significant implications for climate change, air quality, and public health. Affordable monitoring of black carbon is essential for advancing research and policy in under-monitored settings. Currently, commercial black carbon monitors are expensive, limiting their accessibility and deployment. Open-source black carbon monitors offer a promising alternative, providing a low-cost and customizable solution. However, existing open-source black carbon monitors typically measure light absorption at only a single wavelength, which restricts their ability to differentiate between BC from various sources.
A previous master’s student conducted an extensive literature review on the components required to develop a low-cost black carbon monitor and conducted a preliminary cost analysis. This proposal seeks to build on that foundational research by developing a low-cost, dual-wavelength black carbon monitor in the laboratory. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Article 6 of the Paris Agreement encourages international cooperation and allows high-income, high-polluting countries to meet their carbon reduction commitments affordably by funding carbon reducing activities in lower-income countries, claiming the carbon reductions for themselves1. Specifically, Switzerland, under its CO₂ Act and through the The Swiss Foundation for Climate Protection and Carbon Offset (KliK Foundation) aims to offset about 40 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030—10% of its national emissions–with over half of these offsets occurring abroad.
One upcoming collaboration is with Malawi, which involves distributing 10,000 household biogas digesters to dairy farmers2. This project is expected to mitigate approximately 436,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) annually. The primary function of these digesters is to convert organic wastes, predominantly animal dung, into a methane-rich gas. Biogas can be used as a cooking fuel, replacing wood, which is often sourced from local forests, thus reducing carbon emissions from deforestation as well as from the burning of biomass.
The model being installed is the Sistema.bio biogas digester, a plastic bag digester with other components such as valves, pipes and stoves for cooking. These biogas parts are sourced globally—though the exact origins are uncertain—and then assembled in another country. They are shipped to Malawi as ready-to-assemble kits. Biogas has been used as a carbon offset technology for years, but the carbon footprint of the digesters are overlooked in carbon offset calculations. Sistema.bio, as well as other manufacturers, are implementing biogas projects in many countries worldwide using carbon financing, making it crucial to understand the carbon footprint of the installations to accurately estimate their carbon offset potential. Several life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of similar biogas digesters suggest that biogas plants need to operate for up to two years to offset their construction emissions3. This has significant implications for global carbon offsetting and trading and would mean that projects might not be offsetting as much carbon as calculated, and buyer countries, such as Switzerland, should do more to reduce their carbon footprints. It is currently unknown what the carbon footprint of Sistema.bio digesters are as well as other competitors with similar business models and how the carbon footprint compares to more traditional cement and brick digesters that can be built in the country of implementation. It is thus also unknown how the digester footprint might affect carbon reduction estimations of the projects. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
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