Global Health EngineeringOpen OpportunitiesBlack 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
| Monitoring and treatment of plastic washing wastewater from recycling processes is often overlooked, though the high pH, chemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, and oil and grease concentrations can be problematic (Ozdemir and Yel 2023). Treatment of wastewater from plastic recycling is critical to both public and environmental health, since solid waste, sanitation, and water are inextricably linked (Narayan et al. 2021). This thesis project will contribute to a closed-loop plastic recycling pilot for HDPE bottles in Blantyre, Malawi. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Non-electrified health facilities offer 40% fewer basic health services and threaten the safety of patients and providers. In an effort to make renewable energy design and implementation more accessible to non-electrified facilities, we are creating a set of open-source engineering tools to assist with load estimation, system sizing, and performance simulation. We are conducting a case study using these tools with an Indigenous community in northern Colombia. The hope is to eventually conduct a pilot implementation of an optimally sized off-grid solar+storage+micro e-mobility system. The purpose of this project is to prepare for this implementation by designing a remote monitoring platform that tracks the environmental variables and system performance at the health facility, sends them wirelessly to be stored and analyzed, and visualizes them on a web interface. - Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Non-electrified health facilities offer 40 % fewer basic health services and threaten the safety of patients and providers. In an effort to make renewable energy design and implementation more accessible to non-electrified facilities, we are creating a set of open-source engineering tools to assist with load estimation, system sizing, and performance simulation. We are conducting a case study using these tools with an Indigenous community in northern Colombia. The hope is to eventually conduct a pilot implementation of an optimally sized off-grid solar+storage+micro e-mobility system.
A group of students at Universidad del Norte have prototyped the electrical load cabinet for the pilot system. The cabinet’s function is to manage the loads of the health post. For example, in the event of low solar radiation reaching the clinic and little energy stored in the batteries, critical loads (i.e., the most important ones) will be connected and others will be disconnected. These are controlled by contactors and an Arduino. The purpose of this project is to devise multiple control schemes for the turning on and off of loads, based on the solar irradiance, battery state of charge, and simulated demand scenarios and evaluate the energy and health consequences of the control schemes. - Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Appropriately sizing a renewable energy system for a health facility requires knowledge of the types of appointments and medical equipment used given the patient population. Right now, most sizing approaches utilize only information about the medical equipment (e.g., energy specifications) and the number of hours the devices are expected to be utilized per day to estimate the facility’s electrical load. We propose a more patient-centered approach that takes into account the health profile of the clinic and community. This is particularly important for never-before-electrified health facilities, which (naturally) do not have any historical load information upon which new demand estimates can be anchored. Additionally, accurate technical specifications of the medical equipment are important to reaching an appropriate load estimate. These specs are often pulled from devices available in high-income countries or from records provided by multilateral organizations.
We hope to start a free and public database of medical devices being utilized in low- and middle-income settings, so that clinics, renewable energy engineers, etc. can refer to the database when sizing new systems. - Communications Technologies, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| eWaka (https://www.ewaka.tech/) is a last-mile e-mobility startup in Nairobi. They sell two electric bike models and one electric motorbike. Their business is to “green up” the last leg of delivery transportation by managing a fleet of electric vehicles and offering clients reliable and trained riders. One difficulty the company faces is creating a robust battery charging infrastructure for their riders that simultaneously ensures they are never stranded without power and there is no extraneous use of the chargers by non-riders. One idea they have is to distribute the charging infrastructure amongst their clients who run small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). By placing chargers in some subset of these locations, riders can more easily reach a charger when needed. However, eWaka would like to implement an RFID (radio frequency identification) tag system to “unlock” charging capabilities only for riders who will then carry the tag with them. Ideally, the solution will also track which of the riders charged at that location and how much energy they consumed. - Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Filamentous fungi grow as mycelium, a net-like structure consisting of hyphae. To feed themselves, the fungi secrete enzymes from the hyphae that break down organic compounds. Due to their broad substrate specificity, these enzymes have been shown to be able to break down environmentally harmful substances such as crude oil, plastics, antibiotics and pharmaceutical residues. Fungi also developed different mechanisms to be agonistic against human pathogenic bacteria and helminths. With these properties, they could have great potential for use in human waste management. So far, no scientific studies have dealt with the direct treatment of human faeces by mycelium. With this study, you will be part of a pioneer project in the field of fungal treatment of human waste. To get the project started, development of standardized methods to measure mycelial growth speed on human faeces are needed. The developed methods should allow safe and rapid screening of the potential of fungal strains for the treatment of human faeces. Today, mycelium growth measurements are often done by hand and are therefore error-prone and labour-intensive, as the sample must be measured by hand at regular and short intervals. Automating the detection and measurement of the surface area would streamline the process and reduce the error rate due to its automated nature.
**Phase 1: Constructing an Optimized Container**. The goal in the first phase is to construct a container optimized for detecting mycelium. It is unclear whether one or multiple direct or indirect light sources are necessary to clearly observe the growth. This phase will involve experimenting with different lighting setups to determine the most effective configuration. As a basic setup, the CoCoNut photobox can be used and further adapted.
**Phase 2: Developing an Automated System**. In the second phase, the student will develop a system based on a Raspberry Pi to automate as many steps as possible. Ideally, this system will:
- Capture images of the sample at given time intervals.
- Process and analyse these images locally to detect and measure the relevant area.
- Generate a time series with images and the corresponding surface area measurements.
The ideal end result would be a reliable, automated system that provides accurate and consistent measurements of mycelium growth. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| In 2023, the World Health Organization reported that 1 billion people still receive healthcare in a facility that does not have access to reliable electricity. These facilities offer fewer health services and services of lower quality than those with reliable access. In Malawi, insufficient electricity access leads to poor lighting during deliveries and difficulty treating mothers and babies if there are complications during or after birth, for example. Effective provision of modern healthcare requires reliable access to electricity. Without it, consequences for patients and providers are disruptive at best and deadly at worst. While it is known that healthcare facilities deal with unpredictable brownouts and blackouts in Malawi, there is little quantitative information available about power quality and reliability. The purpose of this thesis is to collect this essential data so that health facilities, government bodies, and NGOs have more information to make energy planning decisions and discrepancies in power quality and reliability between health facilities and communities can be identified and addressed.
See Reuland, et al. (2020). Energy access in Malawian healthcare facilities: Consequences for health service delivery and environmental health conditions. Health Policy and Planning, 35(2), pp.142-152. - Communications Technologies, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Article 6 of the Paris Agreement enables countries to engage in carbon emissions trading. In line with this, Switzerland has entered a carbon trading agreement with Malawi, planning to offset about 360,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) by providing Malawian dairy farmers with 10,000 biogas digesters. These digesters transform animal waste into methane-rich gas, used as cooking fuel. Methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas, is captured in this process, reducing its atmospheric release. To accurately measure the amount of biogas used, and the respective carbon savings, the digesters need to be equipped with flow sensors. The only solution available on the market has been preliminarily tested at Global Health Engineering in 2024 and the results yield unacceptable relative errors of up to 50 % in measured biogas flow. This project will test five devices all together to allow for obtaining solid conclusions on the device accuracy and recommendations for their use for the policymakers. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Semester Project
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