Team of engineers to solve Mount Everest's environmental pollution

A team of engineers is set to rid Mount Everest of tones of human waste that is creating environmental pollution and threatening to spread diseases on the world's highest mountain peak.

Earlier, about 12,000 kilograms of faeces were carried by porters from base camps at Everest and the nearby Pumori, Lhotse, and Nuptse mountains to the nearest village of Gorak Shep, which is perched at 5,164 metres above sea level. The human waste was then dropped into unlined pits, leaving the raw excrement to slowly dehydrate and break down in the open air, which, at such high altitudes, could take years, reported spectrum.ieee.org.

Therefore, a team of volunteer engineers, known as the members of the Mt Everest Biogas Project, came up with the idea of creating specially designed biogas reactor that would transform Gorak Shep's fetid trenches into energy. The project would not only eliminate the human waste pits but also provide the village plenty of methane, which could be used for cooking and heating homes.

The idea was first hatched by Gary Porter, a retired Boeing engineer based in Seattle and Dan Mazur, a professional mountaineer. After building a team of engineer volunteers, they started brainstorming to find a solution that would use only materials that were readily available in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital and came up with the idea of creating a biogas reactor.

The team is now working to estimate the cost of the project, which will be funded entirely by donations. The construction is tentatively slated for 2016.