Scientists in Canada have been working on a machine that quickly sobers you up when you're drunk.

The machine aims to halve the amount of alcohol in someone's system in about 45 minutes.

Professor Joseph Fisher from the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, who led the study, told Tim Dower the whole idea is to accelerate getting rid of alcohol out of the body, as currently that is done by the liver.

"The liver only has a small capacity to metabolize alcohol, so it takes a long time."

He says their idea was to see if alcohol could be evaporated out of the lungs, by getting carbon dioxide back into people's bodies but get rid of the alcohol. People can do this by hyperventilating into a paper bag, but that sees you breathe the alcohol back in. 

"I built a little device that allows you to get rid of the normal amount of carbon dioxide that you usually breathe out, and any more than that is given back in the next breath."

He says that during tests, even a small amount of alcohol, they were able to triple the rate of elimination of alcohol.

Fisher says the machine is intended to be used in hospital emergency rooms and make it easier to great and save dangerously inebriated people.

"People can develop concentrations in their blood that is close or exceeds the lethal level, and there is nothing we can do about it"

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