Construction of a Glass Crusher and Evaluation of Waste Valorization Pathways for Cape Maclear, Malawi
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Date
2024-04-22Type
- Master Thesis
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Abstract
In Cape Maclear, Malawi, a nonprofit organization called Sustainable Cape Maclear has been working on the development and implementation of a solid waste management strategy to address the village’s struggle with waste build-up at informal dumpsites. The desired outcome is an improved quality of life for the community and the preservation of the village’s status quo as one of the country’s major tourist destinations. To support the effort, this research project was drawn up. It consisted of three contributive subtasks: first, the design and construction of a glass crusher; second, the proposal of potential waste valorization pathways; and third, the quantification and characterization of the waste dumps.
For the glass crusher, after evaluating already established crusher variants, the design of choice was a manually driven roller mill. During testing, the drivetrain proved to be a major weak point. Due to its insufficient structural strength, the crusher was unable to crush intact glass bottles. However, breaking the bottles first and inserting their shards into the crusher worked quite well, producing particles of various sizes ranging from powder to several centimeters. Therefore, a second and more basic crusher was built to take over the initial bottle-breaking task. The latter can serve as a standalone crusher, if large shard sizes are sufficient, or it can be combined with the original crusher, if smaller sizes are desired. In hindsight, it would have been better to build a more basic and robust crusher right from the start to circumvent many of the issues that arose. Overall, the current system is nonetheless capable of processing the village’s daily amount of waste glass within an acceptable time frame.
The research into possible waste valorization pathways yielded a range of different solutions. Some allow for an economic gain, some are suited only for a specific particle size, and some have a very limited capacity in terms of how much glass waste can be exploited through them. The next step is for Sustainable Cape Maclear to decide on which valorization pathway(s) they want to realize.
The dumpsite quantification and characterization study produced little results besides a map with the dumpsite locations, as it was dropped due to time constraints. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000670971Publication status
publishedExternal links
Contributors
Examiner: Tilley, Elizabeth
Examiner: Tkaczuk, Jakub
Examiner: Kalina, Marc
Examiner: Meboldt, Mirko
Publisher
ETH ZurichSubject
Glass crusher; Glass waste; Solid waste; Waste valorization; Cape Maclear; Malawi; AfricaOrganisational unit
09746 - Tilley, Elizabeth / Tilley, Elizabeth
Related publications and datasets
Is referenced by: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000695292
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