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distilling water

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I was given a water distiller recently and since I use a cpap I thought, what the heck let's give it a try. So I poured in a gallon of water, cranked up the temp to 212, and it's been dripping into a plastic jug for the last few hours.

My question is regarding the first and last runnings. I know when distilling alcohol (which I don't do) that you have to discard the first and last runnings as they are not as pure. Is this also true when distilling water or am I free to just let the machine run until it is done?

Thanks
 
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Another question. Will I need to run the resulting water through a carbon filter or will it be pure enough on it's own?
 
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Distilling water is pretty straight forward. It can be done with the sun, a kiddie pool, a tarp, a pan and a rock. Anyhow, once it condenses in the end you are usually good to go. If you are injecting it or otherwise doing something with it other than drinking or cooking, you may want to distill it twice and filter it but that's debatable. Using accelerated evaporation can be touchy if you force straight water through into the tube by heating it too much. I have a Berkey Black filter setup I run stuff like lake water through. Even without that, I've drank and prepared plenty of distilled water collected from my roof in a rain barrel (containing particulate tar, bird poop, bugs, etc...) and I'm fine.
 
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What I am using is a simple pot still that is intended for distilling water. I just didn't know if there would be any impurities in the first and last runnings. I also didn't know if there was a point that I should stop at or if I should go until it quits dripping. Here is a picture of what I have. Thank you for your response. Oh, I also wondered if I would benefit by turning the temp past 212 as it is taking a very very long time.

MingZhong_Wine_distiller_BV_3.jpg
 
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On a somewhat related note - you might want to calculate the cost of distilling your own water, vs going and buying some. With its very high specific heat capacity, you might be spending more than you realize to distill it - depending on of course your local energy costs.
 
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What I am using is a simple pot still that is intended for distilling water. I just didn't know if there would be any impurities in the first and last runnings. I also didn't know if there was a point that I should stop at or if I should go until it quits dripping. Here is a picture of what I have. Thank you for your response. Oh, I also wondered if I would benefit by turning the temp past 212 as it is taking a very very long time.

Not really sure about running the water through multiple times. Not being familiar with your machine I wouldn't want to venture a guess. Since your machine goes to 212, I'd guess that's to kill most micro-organisms and it is not boiling at 212 by the time to gets to where it gets to the condensing portion of the system. IF it's boiled once already, I'm not sure what good boiling at a higher temperature or boiling multiple times would do. I do know that when doing it "the old fashioned way" you want to avoid a really high boil to prevent the churning water from splattering into the copper cooling tube. That would contaminate the batch and the equipment and require a cleaning. The rule of thumb if you are trying to do it right with really bad water is: Strain, Boil, Distill, Filter or Bleach if possible. Distilling takes time. Pressurizing it (like your machine) or creating larger surface area to cool the water speeds it up. I'm not sure you'd be gaining much by cranking it up much higher, but again, I'm not familiar with your system.

How-to-make-a-still.jpg


img_0471aw.jpg


project_image.png
 
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Distilling is good, however, there was a time when I didn't use a batch of distilled water for something like 3 months, and the water stank. The reason? it was due to the out-gassing from a cheap 10 litre container I had it stored in. So be sure to use food grade plastic, better still, glass.

The water is distilled once. Also, from the graphic you've put up, your distiller has a carbon filter, simply replace it from time to time. Have fun with it, and be sure to check out YouTube videos on the subject, as there are different views on the topic; like anything else. :)
 
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Thanks for the extra information! I go through about a gallon of distilled water every two weeks by using the humidifier on my clap so long term storage isn't a problem for me. So far I've just refilled the container that I started with from the grocery store but I might switch it up at some point just to be extra safe.
 

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