Hi Mike, some things occur to me; not all the organics are volatile at boiling or below; as an example of this consider that some purification processes use steam distillation to carry over oils in a water bath. Further the stainless may leach something into the boiling water, something it's pores could hold with a tenacity that resists rinsing and the initial "drive off the volatiles" process. Glass is best, some of the old pyrex stuff is available at goodwills, though it's a little small for the batches you're making. You might try using a vacuum to lower the B.P., in conjunction with a closed system; say a pressure cooker and a coil condenser. I used to run a pressure cooker with a homemade cooling coil of stainless immersed in a cool-water bath and directly into a glass jug. worked pretty well. I've ended up with a R.O. system and then a mixed resin bed de-ionizer, gets both pos and neg ions, and get water down to a nominal 0.1 microSiemens as measured on a com 100. Thass good enough for me, also passes the taste test. When tasting water, though, it's a good idea to have a comparison sample of water you can trust; rinse and go back and forth a few times..
Rainwater may or may not be good, depends on what pollutants may be in the air. Temperature control can be a significant factor, glass is always best, borosilicate lab glass. So-called soda glass, common, is not the ultimate, but usually works, 'specially after a (VERY tiny) bit of sodium has leached out of it, but that's down to Assay work. Hope this helps, Malcolm On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 15:06 -0005, M. G. Devour wrote: > Those of you who've been making your own distilled water for a while > can probably answer this... > > Now that I've been able to make a few gallons of my own "distilled" > water, I'm less than thrilled with the taste of it. If I didn't know > any better I'd say it tastes a bit like plastic, though my senses of > taste and smell are marginal at the moment. In any case, it definitely > has a stale or chemical kind of taste to it. > > The distillate path consists entirely of the glass lid and glass jar. > Could the glass be leaching something? > > I let the water come to a rolling boil before putting the lid on, so > I'd assume any volatiles are boiling off. Is that adequate? Or, are > there things in the tap water that are close enough to the boiling > point of water that they're getting carried through the distillation > process? > > I suppose I should filter the tap water before distilling, right? > > That and maybe collecting rainwater? <grin> > > Any advice? Thanks! > > Mike D. > > [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] > [mdev...@eskimo.com ] > [Speaking only for myself... ] > > > -- > The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. > > Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org > > To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com > > Address Off-Topic messages to: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com > > The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... > > List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com> > >
