Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
Students can find on this page a general overview on preparing a Master's Thesis in the Chairs of Urban Water Management at ETH Zurich: information about the formal requirements, the duration, the assessment procedures and the criteria by which the practical work, the report, the final presentation and the poster will be evaluated and graded. They can also find a list of currently offered topics.
Supervisors can find on this page information on the requirements the students have to fulfil to complete a Master's Thesis in the Chairs of Urban Water Management at ETH Zurich, organizational and didactical information and the templates for the proposal of new Master's Thesis topics.
Information for Students
Are you interested in starting a thesis with the Chairs of Urban Water Management? Please refer to the Checklist for Students and Guidance document provided below. Communicate your intention to the responsible teaching coordinator and contact them for additional information.
Information for Supervisors
Would you like to supervise a thesis for the Chairs of Urban Water Management? Please refer to the Checklist for Supervisors and Guidance document provided below. Use the Thesis project call template to submit a topic to the responsible teaching coordinator. A professor will have to approve the topic before it is uploaded on this page.
Additionally, you are welcome to send us a short slide deck about your proposed topic(s). Our professors can then publicize your thesis topic during their lectures.
Contact
For inquiries or to submit a proposal, please check the Teaching Coordinators webpage and contact the coordinator responsible for Master's Theses.
Currently offered topics
Below you can see the topics currently offered by EAWAG researchers and private partners. If you are interested in one of the offered topics, contact the person indicated. Once you agree you will do your Master's Thesis with them, contact the responsible teaching coordinator to obtain the documentation form.
You can also independently find a supervisor to develop your own topic. In this case, inform from the beginning the responsible teaching coordinator and a potential supervising professor of your intention. Also, pay attention, the professor must agree to a certain topic being the subject of a Master's Thesis. Not all projects are suitable to become Master's Theses. The topics selected below have already received the approval of a professor.
In aerobic granular sludge (AGS) systems operated as sequencing batch reactors (SBR), a main strategy to enhance granulation is to selectively remove the slow settling biomass. This wastage affects sludge composition, i.e., distribution of flocs and different sized granules, and in turn the microbial performance of the system. The main goal of this master’s thesis is to develop a stratification model and a wastage strategy to control the sludge composition in AGS. The thesis will consist of the following phases:
(A) Short-term stratification experiment
(B) Developing settling model
(C) Simulation of sludge stratification and testing of various wastage strategies aiming for control of sludge composition
DownloadRead More. (PDF, 330 KB)
contact: Livia Britschgi ()
Wastewater treatment needs to become net-zero by 2050. The potent GHG and ozone depleting substance N2O (265 kgCO2-eq) dominates GHG emissions of wastewater treatment and accounts for around 20% of N2O emissions in Switzerland. To effectively reduce N2O emissions, we need to understand the mechanisms behind its formation which is related to microbial pathways, controlling parameters, process engineering and plant operation. Unfortunately, there is currently no N2O mechanistic model which is able to come up with those cross-plant reduction measures. On the other hand, multi-year N2O monitoring campaigns across different full-scale plants are available, yet their potential to reveal hidden relationships and mechanisms remains unexplored. This thesis aims to use insights from explainable machine learning (XAI) to build a mechanistic model which is able to reduce N2O emissions across different wastewater treatment plants in Switzerland and beyond. DownloadRead More (PDF, 306 KB)
contact: Laurence Strubbe ()
While conventional WWTPs only focus on the removal of organic substrates and nutrients, water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) will also aim at converting pollutants into valuable end-products. The current project aims at evaluating the conversion of organic carbon from municipal wastewater into bioplastics, i.e., poly-hydroxalkanoates (PHA). PHAs represent, to a certain extent, a relevant alternative to plastics produced by petro-chemical industry. DownloadRead More. (PDF, 486 KB)
A student interested in biotechnology applied to resource recovery and circular economy, is ideally suited for this thesis.
contact: Nico Derlon ()
A promising solution to increase treatment capacity of existing WWTPs is granulation, a technology where biomass self-aggregates and forms semi-spherical biofilm particles known as aerobic granular sludge (AGS). The main objective of the proposed master thesis is to investigate: (1) the feasibility of the organic media carrier technology and (2) the role of metabolic processes for achieving biomass colonization and granulation in continuous flow systems. The specific objectives are:
- To characterize the physical properties of granules formed.
- To investigate the partitioning of microbial functional groups in flocs versus granules.
- To make practical recommendations for integrating AGS technology in CF systems.
DownloadRead More (PDF, 811 KB)
contact: Stephany Wei ()
Water reuse can help lower domestic water consumption. Often, water reuse projects focus on the treatment of greywater as it is generally less polluted. Few studies have investigated opportunistic pathogen growth in treated and stored greywater. This project aims to compare different treatments of greywater and their impact on the treated and stored water over time. A student motivated to learn microbiology laboratory techniques is ideally suited for this thesis. DownloadRead More. (PDF, 368 KB)
contact: Anne Vescovi ()
This thesis explores how blue-green systems can be designed to reduce toxic micropollu-tant emissions to surface waters and groundwater systems. The student will:
- Assess the current blue-green infrastructure design practice,
- Identify the most relevant blue-green infrastructure design parameters for water quality, and finally,
- Propose an optimised catchment-wide blue-green infrastructure design based on the micropollutant risks for surface waters and groundwater.
DownloadRead More (PDF, 211 KB)
contact: Lena Mutzner ()
Growing urban surfaces coupled with climate change lead to increasing impacts on water resources. While wastewater treatment plants in Switzerland are being upgraded to enhance the removal of micropollutants, up to half of the overall micropollutant load can be discharged via combined and separate sewer overflows without treatment.
The aim of this thesis is to develop a mass flow model to estimate the pollutant loads (micropollutants, nutrients) discharged in Switzerland via sewer overflows for future climate scenarios. DownloadRead More (PDF, 1.2 MB)
contact: Lena Mutzner ()
Micropollutants (MP) originating from different anthropogenic applications (e.g., pharmaceuticals, anticorrosive coating) are harmful to aquatic ecosystems even in very low concentrations, and thus, have become a key topic on today's political environmental agendas. The use of activated carbon has proven to be a successful option to eliminate MPs. However, many of these plants in Switzerland face problems to continually maintain the required elimination rate of 80%; especially during rain events.
The goal of this thesis is to investigate whether we can explain the elimination behavior of a powdered activated carbon plant during rain events by using different modelling approaches. A student keen to develop their programming abilities and having a strong interest in MP removal is ideally suited for this thesis. DownloadRead More. (PDF, 4.4 MB)
contact: Andreas Frömelt ()
The wastewater treatment plant of the future will represent a net source of energy and valuable products, e.g., high-value polymers. Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) contains a wide range of exopolymers, such as Alginate-Like Exopolymers (ALE), associated with various relevant properties for industrial applications (coagulation, production of concrete, paper coating, etc.).
The overall objective of the proposed master thesis is therefore to develop further our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of phosphate/potassium recovery from municipal wastewater by ALE hydrogels. A student interested in learning about advanced technologies and microbial processes applied to wastewater treatement is ideally suited for this thesis. DownloadRead More. (PDF, 107 KB)
contact: Nicolas Derlon ()
Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) systems represent a relevant alternative to conventional activated sludge systems. Eawag recently developed a complete and powerful AGS model (Derlon et al., 2022). The main objective of the proposed master thesis is to (1) critically evaluate the Eawag AGS model by confronting it to datasets from full-scale AGS installations and (2) to develop a good modelling practice (GMP) unified protocol specific of AGS system. A student interested in the learning about advanced technologies and modelling of biological wastewater treatment is ideally suited for this thesis. DownloadRead More (PDF, 107 KB).
contact: Nicolas Derlon ()
The objective of this master thesis is to compare the damage potential of river flooding (fluvial flooding) and flooding from surface runoff (pluvial flooding) for selected case studies. For this, you will create a surface runoff model of a catchment and compute the surface runoff for several precipitation events with different annualities. You will make an on-site plausibility-check and compare your results with the BAFU indicative hazard map for surface runoff. Next, you will evaluate the damage potential with the help of the tool “EconoMe” due to surface runoff and due to river flooding. DownloadRead More (PDF, 1.2 MB)
This thesis will be performed in collaboration with Hunziker BetaTech.
contact: João P. Leitão ()
WWTP Worblental has a vision to create a digital twin (SIMBA#-Model) of the whole catchment which computes the ideal system settings based on precipitation forecasts and which applies those settings to the real system in real-time. The objective of this master thesis is the validation of the SIMBA#-Model fed with radar precipitation forecasts and its comparison with the available operating data. Research questions pertaining to the following two focus areas will be tackled:
- Analysis of radar precipitation forecast data and comparison with measured precipitation: How well does the data match? Which forecast periods make sense? How is the forecasted data generated? Can systematic errors in the forecasts be recognised for the Worblental region.
- Analysis of the model: At which neuralgic points in the model is it required to always feed real operating data? Are the available overflow detections, level and discharge measurements enough in order to design a meaningful model-reality comparison? How good is the model-reality matching for single events?
contact: Max Maurer ()
Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) represents a key advance for wastewater treatment processes (van Loosdrecht and Brdjanovic, 2014), and is presented as the main alternative to conventional activated sludge systems. AGS systems are however usually operated as sequencing batch reactors (SBR), where both microbial and physical selection mechanisms take place and ultimately lead to the formation of granules. But most of the existing WWTP are operated in continuous-flow (CF) mode, while the conversion of CF systems into SBR is very challenging. A main challenge is therefore to develop aerobic granules in systems operated in CF mode, where conditions in terms of microbial and hydraulic selection are not favourable.
The main objective is of the proposed master thesis is to better understand how to control aeration in order to regulate of microbial utilisation of organic substrates, and ultimately to maximize SND and TN removal in AGS systems operated in CF mode.
This master thesis is part of a collaboration between Eawag, Hunziker Betatech AG, ARA Consult and the WWTPs of Gossau and Laufacker.
DownloadRead more (PDF, 417 KB)
contact: Nicolas Derlon ()
Analyzing flood depth and velocity fields using stochastic two-dimensional shallow water equations
The shallow-water equations (SWEs) are a set of hyperbolic partial differential equations that are used to generate two-dimensional time-varying estimates of flood water depth and velocity, with topography of the region and flow from a flooding source as boundary conditions. However, there is considerable uncertainty in the results generated by these equations due to errors in the specification of the boundary conditions and the myriad of sub-processes that are neglected, or simplified, by the flood models based on these equations.
One way to deal with this uncertainty is to generate probabilistic forecasts. In this thesis, we will explore the applicability of introducing noise within the SWEs and converting them into standard stochastic differential equations to obtain more informative two-dimensional flood predictions. DownloadRead more (PDF, 416 KB)
contact: João P. Leitão ()
external pageThe BAFU funded project WABEsense has sensorized alpine water springs and produced data of their water production (discharge and water temperature). The detailed water production data allow municipalities to enhance their general water supply planning (Generelle Wasserversorgungsplanung) and it can also be used by researchers to model the behavior of alpine water springs and the water table in the alps. Furthermore, characterization of the spring behavior leads to a better understanding of their hydrogeology, their effect in the local ecology, and (by long-term tracking of the spring’s characteristics) allow us to assess how climate change and land use is affecting them.
The objectives of this thesis are:
- To enhance the validation of the measurment systems installed, and data processing used by WABEsense; involves in-situ manual measurements at the spring.
- To determine which spring models published in literature could be calibrated using available data, and in a next step performing such a calibration.
- To identify data-driven spring parameters (e.g., flushiness, retention time, stability, etc.)
DownloadRead more (PDF, 1.8 MB)
contact: João P. Leitão ()
Traditional design methods in urban drainage use idealized model rainfalls, so-called “design storms". Modern approaches do not require these model rainfalls as they can assess the hydraulic performance directly based on continuous hydraulic simulations with long-term precipitation series. Where long-term observations are missing, synthetic rainfall series can be used.
In this thesis, available rainfall generators (Kim & Onof, 2020) (Bárdossy, et al., 2020) will be applied to produce synthetic rainfall series for entire CH, based on a variety of available rainfall information. It will thus improve first results with more detailed rainfall data from various sources. In addition, suitable interpolation techniques which consider the complex Swiss topography must be investigated to produce time series with a 1x1km resolution for Switzerland. A student with interest in spatio-temporal data analysis, an affinity for mathematical models, and basic knowledge of a programming languages like R, Python, etc., is ideally suited for this thesis. DownloadRead more (PDF, 878 KB)
contact: Jörg Rieckermann ()
Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) is a technology for wastewater treatment that has been studied over the past 25 years. The objective of this MSc thesis is to assess the impact of breakage and detachment on the distribution of microbial communities and activities among flocs and the different sized granules. The specific research questions are:
- How do breakage and detachment influence the distribution of microbial communities in AGS?$
- How are the microbial communities distributed over the granule’s radius?
- What is the contribution of each sludge compartment to the overall activities?
To address these research questions sludge samples will be collected from WWTP Kloten Opfikon and WWTP Sarneraatal. DownloadRead More (PDF, 482 KB).
contact: Livia Britschgi ()