Water Distillation/Filtration - How To Purify Salt Water for Survival

[TWP]

These are commercial products but the author also mentions homemade stills such as were/are used to distill alcohol.

https://www.backdoorsurvival.com/how-to-purify-salt-water-for-survival/

Some of these (not all) are Very expensive and may require replacement parts on a regular basis...

I think (IMO) that learning to make a copper pipe 'still is a better bet for most of us.

The very simplest of these 'stills is also the cheapest, requiring only some plastic sheet and pots.  They are also slowest at producing water.

The article is aimed at salt water distillation, but can work for non-salt water also.  If you are planning on using water from a questionable source, do be sure to do fiter followed by a disinfection process, such as boiling, before you put that water into your 'still. 

[Jerry D Young]

If I remember correctly, copper is not a good choice for distilling sea water into fresh water. I believe it will corrode quickly as the salt is concentrated. Also not the best choice for many of the essential oils preppers often use. Great for alcohol, though.


Also, as with the other distillation water purification articles lately, it must be remembered that simple distillation only takes out some things that can be in water, including salt water. It will take out the basic 'sea salt' content, but not necessarily everything else that is likely to be in salt water taken near a shoreline. And sometimes even in the open ocean.


I do not want to discourage people from using distillation for water, alcohol, essential oils, and a few other useful products, but I believe it is very important to do much deeper due diligence research before attempting the process(es), and not rely upon articles that do not address these other issues. Something that is a very good idea in general, if complete information is presented, can be deadly when semantics and word usage gets involved, and attempts to present compact or concise information are made, too often leaving out critical information that may not apply in even 95% of the time, but will that other 5% of the time. If a person does not know which is which, there will be problems.


I really hate appearing so negative about some things, but as was pointed out in a couple of other threads, there are new people becoming not only involved in prepping, but trying to contribute to the movement, which is good, of course, but without a strong teaching background, or technical background in the subjects they are presenting, there is information being presented that I think could hurt people. I just am not comfortable with that.


So, please do due diligence research for everything, especially for things that appear really simple. Not everything is as simple as it can be made to appear.


Just my opinion.

[TWP]

Jerry,  'Tis said; Nothing in Life is Simple...

Thanks for the advice and comments, they do help.

With respect to devices for distillation, I used a large, four foot tall, glass distillation apparatus when I was teaching in the school system.  It used tap water input and did produce fairly good water, as measured in terms of ionic content.  The boiler compartment would rapidly fill up with various salts and required regular wash out with Hydrochloric Acid and then rinsing with distilled water.  That wash was needed about once every quarter year.

It produced about 2 gallons per hour and I ran it for a several 8 hour days, at least monthly, to refill a 20 gallon dispensing tank in the chem. lab.

This points out the need for distillation if you want a better quality water, because that tap water was what was delivered by the municipal water department.  People drank it daily, cooked with and bathed in it, chemicals included and added by the water department and from the source wells.

If you have hard water (high natural mineral salt content, which we do have here in Reno, NV) then using an ionic exchanger will remove some of the content, such as Iron and other metals.  It does this at the expense of exchanging the other metals for Sodium metal.  If you don't like or can't handle high Sodium water for consumption, the you need a distillation apparatus for yet more processing.

Note that the 'still I used was NOT CHEAP and used a lot of electrical power when running.  As recall, it needed about a kilowatt or more when turned on.  You can buy lower power units, with all glass design, but be prepared to go through a similar process to keep the device clean and working while you will get a smaller output rate.

If you don't have a glass boiler, you will probably not see the salt buildup until the boiler becomes clogged and will no longer work.  Using a metal boiler will make cleanup more difficult if you use acid to dissolve the salts because it will attack the boiler metal too.

Expect this if you plan on using a still to process your water.

You can find electrically heated stills in online catalogs of chemical apparatus.  Check the prices and decide if it can fit your budget.

Now you know why there is a market for the cheap, plastic solar water still shown in the article linked in my OP.