How to Distill Water

If you fear that your tap water may not be ideal for drinking, or if you are in the great outdoors and running low on clean drinking water, this is the instructable for you! Learn how to distill water in your own kitchen with just a pot and some ice. No Laboratory or fancy equipment required. This method can also be easily adapted if you are in the wilderness.

Distilled water is not only great in preventing mineral build-up in machinery, but it also converts any water source, be it river water, lake water, salt water, or waste water (i.e urine) into clean drinking water. Distillation will remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, heavy metals, radionuclides, organics, inorganics, and particulates, leaving all chemicals, toxins and waste behind and creating pure, clean water.

Distillation is literally the method seen in nature, whereby: the sun heats the water on the earth's surface, the water is turned into a vapor (evaporation) and rises, leaving contaminants behind, to form clouds. As the upper atmosphere drops in temperature the vapors cool and convert back to water to form water droplets. Then once the droplets fall as rain (precipitation) the cycle starts over again.

Different types of methods can be used to distill water. Essentially, distillation entails boiling the water to produce vapor, leaving behind any and all contaminants, which luckily, have a higher boiling point than H20. Once the water entirely vaporizes, that vapor is put into a clean container where it condenses back into pure water. So merely boiling the water will not distill it, it will only potentially remove few toxins.

It is debatable whether drinking large amounts of distilled water is ideal for the human body. Some claim that because the distillation process strips the water of everything besides pure H2O, the natural occurring, potentially beneficial minerals are being extracted as well. However, some research has found that the potentially beneficial minerals present in water are unlikely to be able to be absorbed by the human body.

Let's get started!

(source: http://www.energiseforlife.com/us/distilled-water-...

Step 1: Materials

You will need:

A deep pot with a lid that is concave if turned upside side (i.e is domed if place on pot properly) This will be used to hold the ice.

Ice. Amount varies depending on outside temperature and how much water is being boiled. However, if you do not have access to ice, that is fine too. The condensation process will just take longer, but you can still have distilled water.

A glass bowl that floats. Depending how deep the bowl sinks naturally, you will need to keep checking to make sure the distilled end product does not cause it to sink. You'll figure this out as you begin seeing water forming in the glass bowl.

Step 2: Filling Pot and Heating

Fill your pot with much more water than you want distilled. Place on medium to hi heat

Step 3: Receiver Flask and Lid

Place your glass bowl (receiver flask) into your pot, making sure it floats well enough to allow for some water to be poured into it without sinking.

Place your lid onto your pot upside down

Step 4: Ice

Once your lid is on, place ice onto it. How much ice you use depends on how big the lid is, but as it melts, you can throw it out and put fresh ice onto it.

The ice is designed to cool the distillate to speed and improve condensation, which happens in the receiver flask. Accordingly, you could distill water without ice, but it may take longer to create condensation.

Step 5: Condensation Forming

If you lift the lid off your pot slightly, you will see small droplets of water forming and falling off the inside of your lid onto the glass bowl. It may be hard to tell from the 2nd photo, but the droplets have turned into quite the small pool in the glass bowl. It's amazing to see the process as it is a mini ecosystem of its own.

Step 6: Removing and Storing

Once you think that your glass bowl will not be able to sustain any more water weight without sinking, remove it from the pot carefully and store in a clean glass container.

Enjoy your new life skill and your freshly brewed distill water!

Comments

[Dinky Pete]

I would say tap water and bottled water can be better or worse depending on where you live, I live on the shores of Lake Michigan, where the well water is filtered by sand making it ideal for drinking, however up north and further inland it can smell like rotten eggs… I prefer bottled water to rotten eggs…

[stephrc5]

Thank you for this article. The pictures and the step by step instructions were very informative. I learned something new thanks to this very helpful

[BodoThibodeaux]

You can do the same with higher quantities with a 5 gallon food grade bucket and make a solar still. Spray paint the OUTSIDE of a suitable food grade bucket black, and place a container inside that has a slightly smaller diameter than the inside of the bucket, but is tall enough not to have the undistilled water overflow it. You can use cold packs, wet blankets or a home made garden hose condenser to cool the condensed water on the inside of the bucket lid and it will drip into the middle receptacle.

[Claudio Esposito]

It seems a dumb question so I apologize in advance......if you start with a gallon of water how much water will you end up with afterwards?

[Ticxel]

We are all here to learn, so anyone who shares information is doing a good thing and not to be jumped on for that. The problem is that there's a difference between facts and opinion. The first thing you should do when confronted with information different from what you believe is listen, the second is verify it as correct, the third is to verify THAT source is reputable and maybe check with various sources until you are reasonably sure it's the truth. Only then is it appropriate and helpful to share with others. For example, I believe what was said about tap water being better than bottled in most cases. However, I don't know enough about whether flouride is dangerous and the level of danger, so I'm withholding forming an opinion until I've looked it up. And if it came up in conversation I'd simply say I didn't know until I've gotten confirmation. These actions would really help cut down on misinformation out there. Keep learning friends!

[waho0ka]

I agree, we are here to learn and in general your methodology for uncovering facts is sound. However this article mentions nothing about fluoride, so I question why you are introducing it as a concern? Do you have information on fluoride and why it may be harmful, despite your misspelling of fluoride?

[angelabentley26]

This going to be AWESOME for our weather science lesson! Thanks!😊

[techie88310]

Actually, if the TDS is 0 then it's perfect for making colloidal Silver!!! Going to have to try this and see...

[rodriguezhumbert]

So that little hole on the lid would be for lower boiling point liquids to evaporate through at a minimal waste of steame.makes sens.if anny.

[SamuelR127]

The easiest method is knowing that the water is rich in small amounts of chlorine is to allow your cute goldfish to swim an hour within. Belly up, bad water .

[mylloh99]

Ugh, sorry for your loss :(

[kcox14]

Thanks! I made a mess, because the lid wouldn't sit right and as the ice melted, it tipped and all the ice fell into both the pot and the collection bowl. Plus my fridge ice maker couldn't keep up with the amount of ice needed.

Then it dawned on me - GEL ICE PACKS!!! I get them once a week with meal delivery, and I hate to just toss them, and I get way too many to give away or use. They are reusable, to a point - eventually they'll spring a leak, and then I'm OK with tossing them. I am thrilled - two problems solved!

[CandiceS7]

How long do you heat, before you put ice on inverted lid?

[GwillJ]

I have purchased some distilled water, but this link shows me how I can produce my own distilled water at home. Thanks!

[JR36]

Getting Ice in the wild is easy if your near a Lake, Pond or River. I would just try to avoid any water treated with chlorine. In fact I would try to Avoid Chlorine in any water or food product.

[jwkiv]

Chlorine evaporates quite quickly so, if you're that concerned, pour your water & let it sit for a few minutes & the chlorine will be gone. You absorb more chlorine through your skin just taking a shower, than ingesting a glass of water.

[Bellaizabella]

but no matter how well you look at this picture , chlorine is poison flat out poison , If you live in the city filter out the chlorine, it's dangerous ,

[TimothyJ999]

Ridiculous. Treating water with chlorine is one of the most important public health advances in history, and it has saved tens of millions of lives--people that used to die of cholera, typhus, and other water-borne epidemics that regularly devastated large cities. There is NO evidence that the amount of dissolved chlorine in treated tap water is harmful; and most of it escapes the water within a few minutes.

There are SO MUCH mythology and quackery around drinking water it's crazy. People will believe anything. The US has the safest tap water in the world. It has to be tested several times a day at the treatment facility (something that's NOT true of bottled water, which is why tap water is usually superior). I work with water engineers, and they all drink tap water.

Oh, and distilled water? It's simply not harmful at all to drink it. The amount of dissolved solids in normal tap water is only 20ppm or so; blood plasma is about 9000ppm, sea water about 35,000ppm. So by comparison, putting 20ppm tap water into your body's 9000ppm plasma is virtually identical with putting 0ppm distilled water into it--the osmotic difference between them is less than 0.02%, negligible. This myth has been around for decades and it's simply nonsense.

[AndrewG47]

I have bottled water delivered to my house because the tap water is undrinkable. It smells and tastes like sh!t. I live in rural upstate New York where this should not be the case, but it is. Personally I think it's because of all the pesticides used on the apple trees here that get into the ground water.

All that aside, I will not consume fluoride. There have been extensive studies about that little poison that are hard to ignore. If you're willing to dismiss all of that data, that's just grand! I think the world should work where each person makes educated decisions based on their own research. I don't think another human being should ever be able to tell me what I should or should not put into my body. If Mr. Bellaizabella from above post thinks chlorine is poison, it should absolutely be his right to avoid consuming it.

[RadarS1]

get youre facts straigth most bottled water contain fluoride and lots of more stuf that not supost to be in there (google it) also source water need to be collected there with all the polution and chemtrails you stil think this water as being clean