Bottom’s up! Swedish engineer Andreas Hammar has engineered a new device capable to taking sweaty clothes, ringing them out and turning the moisture into drinkable water that is actually cleaner than his local tap water.

The machine will spin around and heat the clothing to remove the sweat embedded in it; afterwards, using a technique called membrane distillation, the sweat vapor will then be moved through a special membrane created by Hammar that only leads the water molecules pass.

According to Hammar, the most crucial part of the machine operate is a new water purification component that was developed by HVR with help from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology.

So far, more than 1,000 people have drank the former sweat of others.

Hammar built the machine for United Nations-backed charity Unicef as part of a campaign meant to draw attention to the nearly 780 million people around the globe without access to clean water.

But just how much water does the machine produce? According to Hammar, “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.”

That being said, while admitting that it may help Unicef raise awareness, Mattias Ronge, the chief executive of the advertising agency that organized the creation of the machine, Deportivo, said that it has proven to have limitations.

“People haven’t produced as much sweat as we hoped,” he said, adding, “The demand for sweat is greater than the supply. And the machine will never be mass produced.” Go figure.

[via BBC, image via Popular Science]