Deionized or Distilled water in nife cells?

[servant74]

Distilled Water

It is pretty easy to make a small water still at home, but if you have a dehumidifier you are close to as good. An inexpensive home-water-distiller from ebay or WMT will probably do wall you need.

I have been tempted to make a home solar distillation unit, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

...

My Dad used to work at Bell Helicopter, and they used de-minralized water in their plating department. They measured water purity by ohms. Coming out of the deminralizer it was like 10M Ohm, but after traveling 100' in glass pipe it was down to under 1M Ohm, so they had to run it through another (smaller) demenralizer to get it up to the needs of the plating dept.

So 'sufficiently demenralized' water would be fine, but unless you know, using distilled is probably better for use.

At my local WMT (Wal-Mart) I can get deminralized, or distilled, or 'drinking' water (drinking being distilled or deminralized but had some salts added back in for taste). I get distilled for my needs, it is the same price as the other by the gallon.

Hope thi shelps some.

[russ]

Interesting! Point of interest - my well water runs about 550 to 600 ppm total hardness - the entire area is limestone

[tandrews]

My New Dissolved PPM meter tells me that:
1) basement dehumidifier #1 results in 15ppm dissolved solids ($5 score on side of road 10 yrs back)
2) basement dehumidifier #2 results in 8ppm dissolved solids (collection bucket underneath and kinda covered)
3) Storing water in a collapsible plastic (20l camping version) containers adds at LEAST 10ppm in a month from either source
4) My well is upwards of 105ppm dissolved solids (Not surprising since the casing was well washed with a burst pressure line recently - a year old stored water (food grade container) was similar to well reading, so leeched plastics or sourced dissolved - dunno. I do know whatever is leeched from those collapsibles in makes it impossible to "get the soap off" one's hands.

So, my theory that dehumidifier water is pretty much distilled did have some merit after all provided one can police the insect ingress...

I have no standards to compare this to, just posting as followup and because I found it interesting.
Carry on.

[inetdog]

seems a bit silly considering what you are trying to prevent - scaling happens in all pipes

Long ago the reason homeowners installed water softeners was to prevent soap scum on their skin and in their hair in the shower and bath and to get their laundry and dishes clean without residue. Before the introduction of detergents containing phosphates, you could not just add more soap to deal with the problem. Reduced scaling in the pipes was not a selling point anybody cared about. Sodium stearate dissolves in water. Calcium stearate does not .

"We were so much older then, we're younger than that now."

[russ]

The sodium from a ion exchange unit is of concern only to those with nan ultra low sodium intake restriction.

The recommendations against using softened water for drinking, etc are just part of loony land - with rare medical exceptions.

I had never heard the one about using a softener on hot water only - seems a bit silly considering what you are trying to prevent - scaling happens in all pipes

[inetdog]

Their ad contains some facts and some smoke -

1) Any membrane mfg tells you that any sediment going into the membrane is an absolute no no - they are wrong on this point

2)[FONT='Trebuchet MS',sans-serif]Stage 5 - Inline Ion Exchange Resin DI Cartridge every 6-12 months[/FONT]
[FONT='Trebuchet MS',sans-serif]This filter should never, NEVER be used for drinking water, Great for fish but DO NOT DRINK THIS WATER. D.I resins are designed to remove any residual mineral the membrane leaves behind. Membranes deliberately leave minerals in the water to help balance off the aggressive acidic behaviour of RO water.
[/FONT]
The statement is blatant BS

The advertising blurb is written to play on peoples fears about fluoride - the statements about chlorine are bush chemistry - something akin to a witch doctor.

I saw no mention of required minimum inlet pressure of % permeate expected.

Not the type of advertising that would make me want to buy from the party.

A legitimate concern, which they appear to be playing on for their own reasons is that ion-exchange water softeners replace the ions of "hardness" minerals like calcium with sodium ions instead. In areas of very hard water, the result could be significant for someone who is on a sodium-restricted diet or is just trying to reduce their sodium consumption. This, and taste, are among the reasons that many recommend not supplying softened water to the refrigerator or other drinking water sources. Before cold water washing became routine, the recommendation was to soften your hot water only.
(The kitchen sink cold water straddles the need for softened and unsoftened water.)

What they carefully ignore is that ion-exchange resins, by definition replace one kind of ion with another.

[russ]

Their ad contains some facts and some smoke -

1) Any membrane mfg tells you that any sediment going into the membrane is an absolute no no - they are wrong on this point

2)[FONT='Trebuchet MS',sans-serif]Stage 5 - Inline Ion Exchange Resin DI Cartridge every 6-12 months[/FONT]
[FONT='Trebuchet MS',sans-serif]This filter should never, NEVER be used for drinking water, Great for fish but DO NOT DRINK THIS WATER. D.I resins are designed to remove any residual mineral the membrane leaves behind. Membranes deliberately leave minerals in the water to help balance off the aggressive acidic behaviour of RO water.
[/FONT]
The statement is blatant BS

The advertising blurb is written to play on peoples fears about fluoride - the statements about chlorine are bush chemistry - something akin to a witch doctor.

I saw no mention of required minimum inlet pressure of % permeate expected.

Not the type of advertising that would make me want to buy from the party.

[Sunny Solar]

The link is legit and worked for me and the company appears to be an ok Australian business. But some of their claims for some products seem .. HMMMM ??? Im not a water expert but...

[russ]

from what I read inthe Ebay link the distributor seems to be claiming about 50% recovery for their small system.

Lots of people make a lot of claims but with no instrumentation it isn't easy to show over time. Without complete analysis as well as flow there would be no way to tell what was happening.

I have had a number of stories about the yield thrown at me but the membrane manufacturers say no way.

The link wouldn't open for me. I would suggest caution - too many water treatment companies are hustlers - if you know someone and trust them it is different - at least it would be your buddy screwing you.

[Sunny Solar]

from what I read inthe Ebay link the distributor seems to be claiming about 50% recovery for their small system.

[russ]

So, a small reverse osmosis setup, fed by well water, might actually save money in the form of longer electrolyte life, higher charge efficiencies, and/or longer working LIOH...

Something like:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/PORTABLE-REVE...item48457324cf

Many of the smaller units have a recovery rate (good water delivery vs waste) of a low as 10% - which they never mention.

If water availability is a problem you need to use caution.

[tandrews]

So, a small reverse osmosis setup, fed by well water, might actually save money in the form of longer electrolyte life, higher charge efficiencies, and/or longer working LIOH...

Something like:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/PORTABLE-REVERSE-OSMOSIS-KIT-FILTERS-OUT-FLUORIDE-1-70-/310402819279?pt=AU_SmallKitchenAppliances&hash=item48457324cf

[russ]

See the attached URL for a graph comparing different types of water purification - about half way through the doc

http://www.advancedwaterfilters.com/reverse-osmosis-system.html

[Mike90250]

RO = Reverse Osmosis (membrane filter)
DI = De-Ionized water (resin exchange bed)

[tandrews]

Dirty is relative.
Dusty perhaps, the odd insect even. Nothing a simple filter cannot remove.
It hasn't spent a whole lot of time seeping through mineral laden rock however which is harder to remove 100%.
Gotcha is, it's been exposed about as much as it can be to C02 making it a lousy source candidate.

Um, I dunno what RO refers to - maybe expand acronyms?

Edit: inetdog beat me to it...