UNICEF’s Sweat Machine turns sweat into drinkable water

Ever thought of drinking/tasting your or a friend’s sweat while thirsty? I guess, ‘NO’. Recently, UNICEF promoted an amazing Sweat Machine which turns perspiration into clean drinkable water. The promotion was a part of campaign organized by UNICEF to create aware about water and how can we save and properly utilize each drop of water.

While it may look a bit insane and yucky to imagine if sweaty water will be introduced in the packed bottles in market, a Swedish engineer has taken the chance to invent a sweat machine that will turn your perspiration liquid into the water we drink.

The sweat machine was presented in the public for the first time during a water scarcity awareness campaign by Unicef, which was held in Sweden.

The inventor of Sweat machine, Andreas Hammar is an engineer and TV personality based in Sweden. According to the inventor and Unicef, the machine first takes away all the sweat from our sweaty clothes with the help of a spinner, then heating and filtering of the sweating liquid is done in order to remove the impurities after which only the clean water remains in the system.

An estimation made by The United Nations agency reveals that more than 780 million people worldwide fight the unavailability of clean water for drinking and cooking usage.

“It uses a technique called membrane distillation”, said Hammar in ‘The Independent’. Hammar also said, “We use a substance that is a bit like Goretex that only lets steam through but keeps bacteria, salts, clothing fibers and other substance out”.

The machine has been currently set up in Gothenburg where more than a thousand people have already tested and drunk the water processed from sweat.

"They have something similar on the Space Station (International Space Station) to treat astronauts' urine, but our machine was cheaper to build. The amount of water it produces depends on how sweaty the person is, but one person's T-shirt typically produces 10ml, roughly a mouthful.” said Hammar. The inventor also claims that the sweat processed by the sweat machine will be water cleaner than the local tap water.

To promote the campaign, UNICEF offered the Swedish soccer players to have ‘no-more-sweaty’ water taken from their T-Shirts with the help of Sweat machine.

Peter Westberg, Deputy Executive Director (D.E.D.) at UNICEF, Sweden said, “We wanted to raise this subject in a new, playful an engaging way. Our Sweat Machine is a reminder that we all share the same water. We all drink and sweat in the same way, regardless of how we look or what language we speak. Water is everyone's responsibility and concern."

The idea of the inventor to turn sweat into drinking water is highly appreciable. It is a nice small step to fight the bigger clean water scarcity the humans are supposed to suffer in the near future. What do you think friends? Earlier sweaty and salty (and tasty!), the clean drinking water (sweat) may ‘be’ alright to us until it is not extracted from someone else sweat.