UAE calculated to drag the South Pole ice 9,000km away to make drinking water

The people of the UAE who are suffering from sunburn will soon be able to drink water from melting icebergs, pulling back from the Antarctic island nearly 9,000km away.

A company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) proposes a strange plan to provide drinking water to people. The National Advisor Bureau based in Masdar City, Abu-Dhabi, plans to tap water from the giant ice sheets on Heard Island , about 1,000km from the Antarctic continent.

The company will transport ice sheets through 8,800km to Fujairah, one of the 7 emirates in the UAE. Each ice sheet can provide enough drinking water for one million people in 5 years. The plan may start in 2018.

Abdullah Mohammad Sulaiman Al Shehi, the company's director, said they went through the shipping route and used simulation equipment to test the feasibility of the plan, according to Gulf News.

An average ice sheet is less than 76 billion liters of water.

"Our simulation device is expected to take about a year to pull the iceberg to the UAE," Al Shehi said of the UAE Iceberg Project . "We have set up a technical and financial plan. Pulling the ice sheet is the best way. We will start the project in early 2018. Our main goal is water. This project is also useful for tourism and climate ".

The UAE is one of the most arid and scarce countries in the world due to extreme weather. The UAE receives less than 10mm of annual rainfall. Even so, the country consumes more than twice as much water as the global average and could face a serious drought risk in the next 25 years.

An average ice sheet is less than 76 billion liters of water. The iceberg takes a long time to melt completely because 80% of the volume is submerged under water, while the white ice above reflects sunlight and releases heat.

When going to a specially built treatment facility, the workers will exploit the water ice . The ice sheets will be crushed and placed in a giant tank, before going through the filtration process. "This is the purest water in the world," said Al Shehi.