# DISTILLED WATER



## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

There is a shop near me that sells Beer Brewing equipment.

In the Window I see copper coils. 

I was just wondering......How hard is it to Distill Water? 

Can you just build a tank and boil the water......condense it and have clean distilled waster for you engine? 

You would have to clean the tank every so often I would imagine. Maybe the copper coil.

What about a Oil Cooler or Transmission cooler on the copper coil?

Just a thread to pick your brains.

JJ


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## Florida Trains (Jan 7, 2013)

There are many internet articles on distilling water. Good luck.


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

JJ 

Since I can get "steam distilled" water for about 69 cents / gallon in my local store, I would have to need a large quantity of it to justify building a distillation unit and paying for the fuel required to use it. It becomes another piece of equipment to store, clean, and maintain. Remember, there is a lot of junk that will remain from distilling 50 or 100 gallons of well water. 

Looks like a solution in search of a problem.


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## redbeard (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi JJ, 
I have a small 110V steam-distiller that makes 3 quarts at a time. When the price at the grocery is less than 90 cents a gallon it is cheaper to buy it than the cost of running the machine. (this is based on what the manufacturer says the distiller requires electrically and my power cost) Fuel costs (whatever you use) will determine the financial feasibility, but with my small distiller it is a pain to constantly fill and monitor. My distiller has a loop of aluminum finned 3/8 inch stainless tubing about 2 foot long with a small cooling fan to speed condensation. For distilled water I think stainless is advisable. For some reason, periodically the stores here do not have distilled water for a month or two, then I use it. Hope this helps. 
Larry


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Depends on how pure of "water" you want and what is in the water with which you are starting. Some chemicals may be in the water that evaporate at a lower temperature than H2O and would thus be more concentrated in the output, and depending on how accurately you can control the temperature of the heat source, you might raise the temperature higher than the vaporization temperature of H2O and get other chemicals to evaporate and get collected in the output. 

I have always thought that it could be done, but I'd want to discard the early output collected to displose of low temperature volitiles. And I'd want to dump the water that remains in the boiler before the concentration of disolved solids gets too great and starts to precipitate out and coat the inner surface of the container. 

Knowing how much of the output to discard and when to dump the remains is going to depend on the particular batch of water at the beginning. Is it heavily chlorinated? What gasses are in it (radon!)? How hard is the water? Might not get much output for each batch of water. 

For our purposes of just getting purer water for our toy Live Steamers, we probably would not care too much about the purity of the output, except the concentrations of lower volitility chemicals (Chlorine!) would be increased in the output and I would be concerned about what they would do to the copper of the boiler. 

I'd also want to be sure that the whole system is not pressurized and has plenty of ways to vent any pressure in case the cooling system gets clogged for some reason.


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## Scottychaos (Jan 2, 2008)

Considering I spend about $1 a year on distilled water for my live steamers, 
I dont think I will be spending a couple hundred dollars to "make my own" anytime soon!  

Scot


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

JJ, you can make a desert distiller; 
arrange shallow pans of water in a big circle. 
Drive stakes around the circle and use saran wrap to enclose the sides. 
Stretch a plastic sheet over the top and toss a pebble in the center. 
Place a pot under the pebble and wait for the water to evaporate and condense on the plastic, gravity will take it to the pebble where it should dropi nto your bucket. 
You could 'automate' it with float valves and a hose from the collector to a tank. 

Now you can do your ironing.... ha ha. 

John


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## tom p (Jan 30, 2009)

How pure??? Warm distilled water is fairly corrosive in the sense that it will pick up copper LEAD or aluminium if they are used in a condsenser. glass or ceramic coils need to be used. That what commercial distillers use. For the 3-4 gallons per year, it is not worth building your own.


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

At the IE&W Ry meets during the year we use about 70 gallons each year. With tax that's about $50.00 

For me, It is not worth messing with all the various apparati [apparatuses ?] to produce, collect and store my own. As it is, I keep about 15 gallons on hand all the time, and just rotate the stock so I use the oldest first. 

If you had four or five parties for your friends every year, $50 for beer [or soda] wouldn't go very far. Its spending dollars to save dimes.


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## aopagary (Jun 30, 2008)

Posted By John J on 13 Feb 2013 06:32 AM 
There is a shop near me that sells Beer Brewing equipment.

In the Window I see copper coils. 

...my first thought actually went in a different direction.
why not get yourself a good corn mash recipe and see if you cannot distill some ethanol for fuel?


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## TheRoundHouseRnR (Jul 15, 2012)

I manage a fish room here in PA. I also do tank maintenance. For ALL our saltwater systems , fish only or reef we use R.O. ( Reverse Osmosis ) water. It is the purist form of water you can get which is essential for saltwater livestock. It is used in kidney dialasis, every canned food, medicine, or bottled products that contain water in them, and also used on ships to make drinking water. Many cities use large RO filters and then add calcium, iron, and other things back in for taste.

Think of the R.O. filter as a fork in the road. One line in to the filter and then splits to two, a waste line and clean water line. The down fall is the amount of waste water. It all depends on the system. Mine does one gallon clean to 2.5 gallons waste.

I change the R.O. filter every year or so and micron block and carbon filter every 3 months. 

The up front cost of the system versus what you use would never make sense, however if you know someone in your area, like me! or IF you ever had the dream of a saltwater tank in your house, this could work out for some. Actually some people have them in there homes because the water supply is that bad. You never know it but your relatives or neighbors might already have one.

Things to take note of-
- Using a TDS meter on the system always assures pure water
- I have tested a many stores distilled water only to find out its BULL... more like tap on many ocations. So don't trust your store till you had it tested. 
- Its regulation that any food grade products use R.O. water if they use it at any time through out the process. Maybe not for washing but consuming.
- Most places sell it very cheap and might even give you some if you only need a gallon


I guess it would never make sense to own a R.O. filter for your steam engines. Even if you used it for an entire club. Unless you knew someone , then your set. 

My point is after years of testing stores "distilled water" BEWARE. Its not always pure. Plus side is a TDS meter , or total dissolved solids meter can be obtained fairly cheap and well worth it I believe. 


The Roundhouse RnR


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