Distillation Thoughts

[Paul]

A question was raised about distillation which I thought I'd share with you.
"Is distilled water free of all bugs and chemicals"?

First thoughts was it'll be free of bugs and viruses BUT not everything else.

It'll get rid of salts. True, but not all salts and some Iodine salts have boiling temperatures close to water.
Minerals like calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous are gone.
It'll probably also get rid of any heavy metals i.e.lead, arsenic, and mercury.

What it won't do is get rid of all chemicals.
Some pesticides and herbicides plus industrial chemicals all have lower boiling points than water so you can't distill them out easily.
Note VX gas was a failed pesticide!
Even rain water has some chemical content.
Think acid rain and dissolved chemicals that some industry chucks out from chimneys.

So what can you use to completely filter out chemicals?
Nothing is the short answer and even storing water in some plastic bottles adds to the soup from chemicals leeching from the plastics themselves. Some survivalists only use glass or stainless steel water containers for just this reason.
Carbon and granular systems can filter most common chemicals out but not all.

Whats the difference between demineralised, deionized, and plain old distilled water then?
Nothing they are all the same BUT industry isn't exactly worried about making battery top up water safe to drink
So your local car parts shop's battery top up water or supermarket demineralised steam iron water may not be safe for human consumption.

After all the original thought was distilling at home to make water safe to drink not going out buying it.

Finally is distilled water safe to drink?

Two schools of thought here.
Distilled water has been stripped of natural minerals. Some 'experts' say that drinking distilled water STRIPS out the bodies own store of chemicals.
I subscribe to the notion that it doesn't strip out chemicals BUT doesn't add any to your body. Thats a huge difference in thinking.

You eat food, you live, it all needs minerals to work efficently so not putting in dissolved minerals from water means the body uses up it's own reserves.

The scientific world still can't decide BUT consider where desalination of water (Stripping out of salts and also any other minerals) by distillation has been going on for years without ANY problems. I'm talking about maritime usage especially nuclear subs.

It should be noted that Reverse osmosis pumps do the same thing as distillation regarding minerals in water as does some carbon filtering so they could be regarded as bad for you depending on which theroy you choose to follow.

.

[Dorset Lad]

I think some practical experimentation is called for here. And I see an interesting overlap with the distilling wine / spirits section of the forum. ;-)

[Skean Dhude]

(5 May 2012, 06:16)Paul Wrote: Some pesticides and herbicides plus industrial chemicals all have lower boiling points than water so you can't distill them out easily.
Note VX gas was a failed pesticide!
Even rain water has some chemical content.
Think acid rain and dissolved chemicals that some industry chucks out from chimneys.

When done properly you would heat the water till it boils. You would then discard anything output at that point and then collect the remaining output.

The stuff that boils before water would be in the discarded collection and the stuff that boils after is still in the pan.

However, I doubt it would rid it of everything. Nature does this and then filters in the ground and repeats quite a few times before it is done.

However that is the best you are going to get just by distilling.