Master Thesis: Life Cycle Assessment - Bremerhaven, Deutschland - Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung

Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung

Geprüftes Unternehmen

Bremerhaven, Deutschland

vor 2 Wochen

Geschrieben von:

Lena Wagner

beBee Recruiter

Beschreibung

The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is a member of the Helmholtz Association (HGF) and funded by federal and state government.

AWI focuses on polar and marine research in a variety of disciplines such as biology, oceanography, geology, geochemistry and geophysics thus allowing multidisciplinary approaches to scientific goals.

Master thesis: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of landbased seaweed cultivation for packaging material (w/f/d)

Background

Seaweed cultivation is currently receiving abundant attention as a nature-based solution to climate change and as a tool that can provide ecosystem services to humanity and contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Nevertheless, data quantitatively assessing the sustainability of different types (e.g. land-based, nearshore) and scales (e.g. lab-, pilot-, or large-scale) of seaweed cultivation are still lacking. Additionally, the sustainability of seaweed cultivation along the entire production chain, including cultivation, harvesting, processing and product development, will depend on the final product that is being developed (e.g. food, pharmaceuticals, feed, packaging).

Therefore, the goal of the current project is to quantitatively assess the sustainability of land-based seaweed cultivation for packaging production using life cycle analysis (LCA) along the entire production chain, from cultivation to product development at lab scale.

The German partner is currently developing seaweed-based packaging within the Mak-Pak Scale-Up project.

The LCA will provide important information on how sustainability at the different stages of production can be optimized, and at what scales the production becomes most sustainable.

The project will be carried out by a Master's Student co-supervised by the project manager and the German partner.

Tasks
Collection, compilation and analysis of data required for life cycle assessment of seaweed cultivation

Environmental life cycle assessment - this will provide information on the sustainability and cost effectiveness of land-based seaweed cultivation for seaweed-based packaging in the fast-food sector.

The results will provide important insight about how and at what stages the production chain can be optimized

Step by step methodology of life cycle assessment on land-based seaweed cultivation system will be developed and described.

Requirements:

Bachelor in Marine Biology, Biology, Environmental Science, Sustainability Studies, Computational Systems Biology or similar
Experience with data analysis
Willingness to travel
Ability to work in a team
Good English communication and writing skills
Experience in conducting life cycle assessments or using related software is desirable, but not necessary
Experience in planning and setting up laboratory experiments is desirable, but not necessary

Further Information
The place of employment will be

Bremerhaven, but will include a funded three week visit to the University of Latvia for training in life cycle analysis.

Start:
as soon as possible

You are interested?

Dr. Laurie C. Hofmann (
For further information please contact