Swedish Machine Turns Sweat Into Drinking Water 105
New submitter Taffykay writes "Swedish designers developed the Sweat Machine to drain perfectly good drinking water from sweaty clothes! PR Agency Deportivo has teamed up with UNICEF to show off the machine at the Gotha Cup youth soccer tournament in order to highlight how many people around the world lack access to basic drinking water."
Mountain Dew... (Score:2, Funny)
..Already beat them to it with their sugared urine.
Dune much? (Score:2, Insightful)
Stillsuite?
Re: (Score:3)
"Urine and faeces are processed in the thigh pads" Leit Kynes
(or used to power your cellphone)
Re: (Score:1)
Only if it came from Ikea.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
We already had that. Just add vodka. That way you get to be drunk and not tired at all.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Always mix uppers and downers. What could possibly go wrong!
Re: (Score:2)
You might have a good time?
I am not suggesting drinking a case of redbulls and a handle of vodka here, but 3 of them are not going to kill you.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it won't kill you, but the behaviour 3 vodka/redbulls induces might cause you to kill yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
We already had that. Just add vodka. That way you get to be drunk and not tired at all.
Red Bull may be the only substance known to man which has its flavor improved by adding alcohol.
Re: (Score:2)
Red Bull may be the only substance known to man which has its flavor improved by adding alcohol.
Ugh. To this day I can't smell Red Bull without fighting the urge to vomit (again), and I quit drinking several years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
They said sweat, not urine.
Re: (Score:2)
See the section on Chemical synthesis and commercial production.
Oblig Dune reference (Score:3)
So how long before I can haz sillsuit?
Seriously, that is what everyone else is thinking right? I fully expect in the time I typed this that this story has gone from 0 comments to about 4 people beating me to mentioning stillsuits.
Re:Oblig Dune reference (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
ABBA references are lost on all the 'yutes on /.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Oblig Dune reference (Score:5, Funny)
It's going to be a Kickstarter. And if you pledge $200, you will get a free pair of blue contact lenses, along with your still suit. A pledge of $1,000 will get you a crysknife with holster.
Re: (Score:2)
The scary part is that if they looked anything like the ones in the David Lynch movie adaptation, I'd back that project in a second.
Re: (Score:1)
The one with Emperor Ming, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Sting?
Don't forget FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, and that guy from Das Boot!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. The one that had enough of a budget and commitment to actually capture the Zeitgeist of the Known Universe at that time.
Re: (Score:2)
It's going to be a Kickstarter. And if you pledge $200, you will get a free pair of blue contact lenses, along with your still suit. A pledge of $1,000 will get you a crysknife with holster.
I'd want the personal shield too.
Re: (Score:2)
I count four comments referencing the stillsuits prior to yours, but one of those is a reply to another comment that referenced them and came five minutes after you, so that doesn't count.
Your estimate was off by one. Close.
Re: (Score:3)
Ok 2, I wasn't too far off, now that I have skimmed the article, 2 thoughts:
1. This doesn't get us any closet to stillsuits. Therefore, since they got my hopes up, and I am now dissapointed, I am firmly against this sillieness. Don't they realize what harm they are causing by getting people's hopes up?
2. I couldn't help but think that the picture of the sweaty girl in a tank top didn't actually add anything to the story except a little eye candy. I mean, maybe the author/editor/layout person is a friend of
Re: (Score:2)
2. I couldn't help but think that the picture of the sweaty girl in a tank top didn't actually add anything to the story except a little eye candy.
Fact: If you wanted more people to RTFA, you should have lead with this.
Re: (Score:2)
How does the machine work? Another lacking summary delivered to you by Slashdot.
"A pile of sweaty clothes goes into the dryer in order to spin out the water. This is then exposed to UV light before it passes through the high-tech filter to remove salt and bacteria. And lastly, the water is funneled through a coffee filter to remove clothing fibers." ... and lastly, the water is funneled through a coffee filter to remove clothing fibres??!?
Something tells me that the machine works as well as all those free energy machines and magnetic gasoline enhancers that you read about.
Now repeat fast (Score:1)
Lame (Score:3)
Turning sweat into drinking water is lame. I drink straight from the source! - Edward “Bear” Grylls
still (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"Fremen" does indeed sound vaguely Nordic... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fremen live in Sweden?
I bet they think so...
Walk without rythym and you won't attract the worm (Score:1)
Sweat is processed in pockets here and here, urine and excreta on the thighpads here. With a properly maintained stillsuit you may survive for weeks, even in the deep desert.
lack access to basic drinking water? (Score:1)
Let's thank Nestle [prisonplanet.com] for that as they drain our rivers and aquifers dry while the rest of us are being rationed.
There's plenty of water. It is the corrupt business of distribution that is causing any shortages. Same goes for food and energy.
That's Gothia Cup. (Score:3)
That's Gothia Cup [gothiacup.se], not Gotha Cup. TFA has it wrong as well.
Horrible event, btw. The city is filled with thousands of smelly little football playing brats, making transportation all but impossible.
Model in TFA (Score:3)
If its the model in TFA photo, no processing is necessary. I'll drink it as is.
no sweat (Score:2)
The world is a carcass... (Score:1)
Who can turn away the Angel of Death? What Shai-hulud has decreed must be.
He will know your ways. (Score:2)
The real test... (Score:1)
is if they can turn Coors Light into something fit to drink. :P
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Waterworld! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody develops a stillsuit and you think of Waterworld? This site isn't what it used to be.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody develops a stillsuit and you think of Waterworld? This site isn't what it used to be.
Where are my mod points when I need them?
Re: (Score:2)
Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody develops a stillsuit and you think of Waterworld? This site isn't what it used to be.
These days, Slashdot is a roll of the DICE.
Re:Waterworld! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody develops a stillsuit and you think of Waterworld? This site isn't what it used to be.
Are you sure about that? Waterworld was a saltwater world, as in: water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. People have died of thirst in the middle of a the earth's oceans for lack of energy efficient water purification equipment so effectively you would have a pretty good use case for a stillsuit in Waterworld. Perhaps not quite as much as you would have on Arrakis but a stillsuit could nevertheless come in handy as emergency equipment since sweat is easier to recycle than seawater due to it being less saline (9PPT vs 35PPT) meaning that filters would probably last longer. A stillsuit would be even more useful if the material the stillsuit was made of also functioned as a big wearable solar cell to power the purifier since, according to several survival gurus on the various science channels, hand powered water purifiers actually cause you to lose more water than you gain by using such a device. Wearing the purifier and getting free energy by wearing it would be pretty neat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A stillsuit in the middle of the ocean would be idiotic. Why capture a thimbleful of salty, oily sweat when there is an unlimited supply of seawater around you? Even if it is more saline, there's actually enough of it to be of use. Aside from hand cranked purifiers, there are solar powered, and gravity powered units. There are probably even wind and wave powered. I saw a unit on a science show back in the 1970s that looked like an inner tube with a clear plastic cone attached to it. You inflated it, set it afloat, and the sun did all the work. Heck, a properly designed life raft [gizmag.com] can be its own desalinator.
Firstly who says you can't purify seawater with a still suit? You could engineer it to absorb water through the outer surface which is what fish do although that would make it more of a 'fish-suit'. Secondly a still-suit/fish-suit would have a whole lot more surface area from which to generate energy than a solar panel suspended on the outside of your boat which is easily damaged or lost, you take a still-suit/fish-suit with you wherever you go and you could use excess energy to power other stuff such as a
Re: (Score:2)
look man if you can turn sweat and urine into drinking water.. why not saltwater?
waterworld was 100% sunny all the time.. evaporating would have been easy enough. if you got the parts for a stillsuit.. surely you should be thinking about dune. but then again, where were the stillsuits in dune dumping all the heat? serious question. if you don't use the evaporating for cooling you're pretty much fucked in a gimp suit standing in the desert.
Re: (Score:2)
> (b) you can only build up so much heat before convection keeps the temperature stable (not sure if
> that's enough to survive though).
Ever seen a dog pant in the heat? They do that because they don't sweat. The bigger the animal, the more of a problem that is (less surface area per unit volume). A small human is about the size of a mid sized dog.
Wearing a suit like this, you effectively wont have sweat glands either....except.... Dune claims it still works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_of_ [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
You're talking about a world where prescience is real and mutated humans teleport ships around with their brains because of a magic "spice" made of dead giant sandworms, which one of the main characters eventually *becomes* over thousands of years, and that's your nitpick?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually melange was produced by the living sandworms, the water of life was the result of killing them with water, which was given to the reverand mother whose body changed it from a poison to a potent orgy inducing hallucinogen.
Anyway, point taken but, we were specifically talking about the stillsuits and feasibility of them as described.
Re: (Score:2)
Nanotech heatsink with fractal surface area.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This site isn't what it used to be.
It never was.
Re: Waterworld! (Score:2, Informative)
That was urine in Waterworld. Sweat recycling is in Dune.
Re: Waterworld! (Score:5, Informative)
Dune Stillsuits reclaimed all water that was excreted by the body. From sweat to waste products, and even including the moisture from breath. That's why they had the nose plugs.
Re: (Score:1)
I was always bothered by the thermodynamics of Stillsuits. Sweat evaporation is the body's cooling system. So if you're wearing a suit that then recondenses that water then you're gonna cook.
Superhuman psychics, and men capable of folding space time I was ok with.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The cooling effect of sweat is the result of the evaporation of water on the skin, which uses thermal energy. The resultant loss of energy lowers the temperature of the skin, and a continuous flow of blood to and from the cooled area lowers the core temperature. So long as it allows the actual evaporation to occur, there's no reason it wouldn't work to condense it again. No broiler effect would occur.
You've only got half the thermodynamics equation there. If evaporation consumes heat energy, condensation releases it. So when the stillsuit recondenses the evaporated water into liquid water, it will create a nice toasty suit offsetting the cooling effect of the sweat.
Re: (Score:2)
The cooling effect of sweat is the result of the evaporation of water on the skin, which uses thermal energy. The resultant loss of energy lowers the temperature of the skin, and a continuous flow of blood to and from the cooled area lowers the core temperature. So long as it allows the actual evaporation to occur, there's no reason it wouldn't work to condense it again. No broiler effect would occur.
You've only got half the thermodynamics equation there. If evaporation consumes heat energy, condensation releases it. So when the stillsuit recondenses the evaporated water into liquid water, it will create a nice toasty suit offsetting the cooling effect of the sweat.
Yes, but the suit can be nice and toasty on the outside, and remain comfortable to the occupant. Phase change salts, peltier/seebeck devices; there's plenty of ways of sinking the heat somewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Now, perhaps if the suit had some type of heat-pump system
Re: (Score:2)
With an external
Re: (Score:3)
When I think urine recyc. I think Red Dwarf. Another second place for WW.
Re: (Score:1)
Better yet, we need the water extractor from Tank Girl that reclaims ALL the water in someone's body. Then use it on you for bringing up Waterworld.
Also ripped off from Dune. [wikia.com]
Re: (Score:2)
In Dune they waited until the guy was dead. Also wasn't there a similar thing in Stranger in a Strange Land? That one came out four years before Dune.
Re: (Score:2)
Not always. In Dune Messiah, Korba was sentenced to the Death Stills for plotting with rebels to assassinate Muad'Dib.