People's Rights
French Engineer Wants to Use Icebergs to Eliminate Drought
 |
August 11, 2011 TheFreshOutlook  |
French engineer, Georges Mougin, has been working on a project that plans on moving icebergs from Polar Regions to areas in severe need of fresh water in order to supply water at a lower price and with a reduced carbon footprint.
Mr Mougin, who has been involved in several innovative projects such as the Channel Tunnel and the roofing of the O2 Arena, first proposed the idea in the 1970s but it was quickly mooted. However, the idea has been revitalised by scientists at Dassault Systèmes, who have figured out optimum conditions to transport these icebergs through modern computer simulation.
The Fresh Outlook spoke to Cédric Simard, the project director at Dassault Systèmes, who said: “Basically, Dassault Systèmes created a virtual world which could provide Mougin with a way to simulate the iceberg transportation operation as it would happen in reality, while monitoring the fuel consumption of the tug-boat and the iceberg melt along the route of the convoy.”
In his blog, Mr Simard describes the towing to be “no actual effort” as their research and technology have found ways to transport the iceberg as though “the water had become one enormous conveyor belt”.
The simulation takes an already broken away iceberg from Newfoundland, Canada, which is then pulled by a tugboat with the aid of kite sails to the Canary Islands on a 140-day journey. They chose these islands as they “suffer shortages of water and already use desalination, so it is a suitable place to test the ‘iceberg’ alternative.”
Mr Simard explained that “one tug with 130 ton traction would be sufficient to tow a 7 million ton tabular iceberg – the equivalent of a nutshell next to an ice mountain.” To contain the iceberg, it will first be encircled with a belt, which will then drop down an insulating net which will help to move the iceberg and also minimise water lost by melting.”
On their website, the company explains that: “The island of Newfoundland stands out as a departure point because of the ocean currents that favour towing the iceberg at the lowest cost. Moreover, the Newfoundland area already has the environment and the infrastructure required for such a project: icebergs, certainly, but also an iceberg surveillance system and expert knowledge of their natural drift.”
When asked who actually owns these icebergs, Georges Mougin and François Mauviel, another of the project leaders, said: “They are within territorial waters [meaning] they are under state jurisdiction. In the high seas they are ‘Rex Nullius’ and become, like a wreck, property of the entity which get control of them.”
Icebergs are virgin natural resources that have “no risk of overexploitation” because every year 350 billion tonnes of ice break away from ice shelves and float in the oceans until they melt. These melted away icebergs contain 3 trillion cubic metres of fresh water – almost enough to meet the world’s 3.3 trillion cubic metre annual usage.
Mr Mougin is now raising £2 million for a trial that is due to take place next year.
By Shahnaz Khan
[image courtesy of David Schroeder]
