What's the cheapest/most efficient way to distill water? I don't really want to go out and buy a distillation flask or professional condensor, what can I rig up instead?
Reason: city water is shit, kinda like that Michigan scandal, want to make it drinkable water.
Brita filter
>put heavy glass in middle of bucket/bowl
>fill bucket/bowl with water around outside of glass
>cover it with saran wrap
>put a weight in middle of saran wrap
>place in the sun
>wait
>>1006874
Is the saran wrap covering both the glass and bowl? And the sun would give enough heat? Would it be worth it to line the bowl with something reflective like tin foil/find a bowl that's reflective inside?
Rent or buy a reverse osmosis system. You can find decent ones for around $100 or so online, Otherwise get a zero water pitcher. It used weak base deionization to purify water.
>>1006947
Household reverse osmosis recovers only 5-15% of the water entering the system. Distillation is far more accurate and far more efficient, aside from the annoyance of heating and rapidly cooling.
>>1006874
this, solar stills are cheap as fuck and the bigger you can get the better, the only way it's not efficient is in terms of time, but you don't have to power them past putting them in direct sunlight, and they tend to work better in less humid places that are generally hotter
if you have a satellite dish laying around you could put a bunch of tiny mirrors on it, and put a pipe at where the light converges a,d have a nice big reservoir that feels that pipe at steady rate and connect the output to a cooling worm setup and make lots of water most of the day
if you have normally high humidity, you could do a morning dew collection setup, but they are huge and don't really capture enough water for a family to live off
what ever you do, filter the water before you run it through any kind of still, you can get some nasty shit in there that rudimentary distilling won't get rid of
>>1006850
get a fucking drinking water distiller. We just bought our second in 7 years. I think it was about $300, but the last one made thousands of gallons for us before the switch gave. Could have replaced the part, but the wife threw it away. Distilling water (enough to drink and cook with on a regular basis) is a tedious task, if you have some half-ass setup, you're not going to do it after a few times. Just get a purpose made machine
>>1006957
shit forgot pic
>>1006957
See, I'm a college student, and have no intent on spending $300 on a water distiller when I can do it way cheaper without using electricity. I've been looking into solar stills and you can make them pretty big for very cheap, it's the most reasonable approach I see so far.
>>1006850
It's illegal to distill water, because the the water could be used to make alcohol, that is already legal. I'm sorry, you're just going to have to deal with drinking toxic chemicals.
>>1006961
They're $100 on ebay, and if you use a dimmer switch and killawatt, you also have a miniature alcohol still.
In b4 someone comes in and starts talking about drinking distilled water will kill you.
>>1006961
>college student,
have fun with that useless degrees and debt
>>1006948
Source?
>>1007379
you're retarded right?
>>1006850
>What's the cheapest/most efficient way to distill water?
buy it already distilled there is no cheaper way.
Distilled water is not good for you, I wouldn't drink much of it or you'll get an electrolyte imbalance pretty quick.
>>1007697
Old wives tale. The amount of stuff you get from tap water is negligible. Its mostly calcium and such anyway. An 8 oz. glass of Tang (made with distilled water) has more of that stuff in it then 2 gallons of tap water.
Also water filtered via that standard means is almost as 'pure' as distilled water. They only had minerals for taste. If you've every had filtered water it tastes kinda like nothing and some people don't like that.
>>1007701
this, if you actually eat stuff, it's not an issue, you can also soften the water after you distill it to make it taste a ton better
>>1007507
Why is there insulation on that tube?
>>1008338
Pick it up and see.
>>1008338
Probably for handling it, not function.
Drinking water plant operator here. THIS THREAD IS THE LULZ. Do continue.
>>1008353
do you work in a shitty area? do you understand the underlying chemistry or are you just a knob turner?
>>1006874
A variation on this would be the plastic still. I believe that it was a Swedish guy who invented it for discretely distilling alcohol, but works just as fine for water.
Just buy a water purifier. A ceramic filter one. You fill it up and in about and hour or two you have a few gallons of distilled water. This isn't done through evaporation and condensation, just filtered.
>>1008764
that would work best with a dome, instead of the inverted dome where the liquid condenses in the center
>>1006948
Say what? Most recovery rates are around 30 to 40%, it mainly depends on the manufacturer's specs. It is the most economical way to get high quality, low total dissolved solid water without using extra energy. Most systems can produce water with around a 80 to 90 % reduction of the minerals present in water that cause objectionable tastes/flavors. In order to be considered "purified" the water needs to be less than 5 ppm. Store brand generic bottle waters are around 15-20 ppm, more popular brands like Fiji or arrowhead are around 250 ppm. Averages for tap water can vary from 100 to 500 ppm. The only cheap option for you is the ZERO WATER pitcher, it produces 0 ppm or purified water without the application of external energy (heat).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DabnOLtLFnc
Buy a bunch of those. Probably quite literally the most efficient water distillers ever made. Get a bunch of these shits in parallel like control rods at a nuke plant.
>>1006850
Isn't distilled water bad for you in large quantities?
Also, either get a water tank or get a Brita filter.
>>1007507
>pic
>going to the trouble of distilling
>lets hot liquids condense in plastic container
Heat + plastic + water = leaching
It doesn't matter what type of plastic.
>>1009584
Leaching of what. Completely inert hydrocarbons? Oh the horror
>>1009587
Plasticizers, colorants, stabilizers, reinforcing agents, and fillers.
