Battery Water; Distilled Drinking Water vs. Deionized Battery Water

[svinshallah]

Over the years, I've found that real, pure distilled water is readily available at any good-sized pharmacy. It's sold to doctors and dentists who need water with no organic or inorganic contaminants. Here in Panama, demineralized water is available in the battery stores for about $3.75/gallon, while medical grade distilled water is about $4.50, but somewhat harder to find.

[FSMike]

Anybody care to speculate how many minerals are in drinking water produced by a reverse osmosis watermaker?

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by FSMike

Anybody care to speculate how many minerals are in drinking water produced by a reverse osmosis watermaker?

oh, about the same as DI and distilled water

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by FSMike

Anybody care to speculate how many minerals are in drinking water produced by a reverse osmosis watermaker?

No need to speculate just test for TDS.

[colemj]

Originally Posted by Don L

oh, about the same as DI and distilled water

No, much more - over 100x more.

Mark

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by colemj

No, much more - over 100x more.

Mark

yeah you probably are right that I'm wrong as I only do water testing on the 3

but then this is now a silly thread about nothing really

[transmitterdan]

Sorry for the short answer previously. I was using my iPhone app and hit send before finishing. My point was that if you test for total dissolved solids in your on-board RO product water you'll find that it has a lot more "things" in it than genuine DI water. Water isn't fully deionized by reverse osmosis unless you do it several times with different membranes and ultimately with a deionization pass through a resin bed.

Distilled water is deionized until it comes into contact with other objects. Deionized water quickly absorbs ions from pipes and tanks. That's one reason distilled water has minerals added to make it drinkable. Otherwise it will pull "bad" ions from pipes and you don't want a ton of copper or iron ions in your drinking water. If you do ingest deionized water it can quickly upset the mineral balance in your system. Best to drink "drinking" water which an on-board RO machine makes very well.

BTW, on-board made RO water is not very kind to batteries.

[colemj]

Don't mean to argue, but you are getting 0 ppm tds readings from your watermaker? We certainly can't reach that with ours. I get 0 ppm tds from distilled and DI water, but the watermaker is 200-400ppm.

Mark

[transmitterdan]

This report contradicts my training that people should not drink real deionized water. http://www.wqa.org/pdf/techbulletins...tionlowtds.pdf

YMMV.

[kthoennes]

For Pete's sake we're talking about boat batteries that usually live in the bilge with mold spores and mildew and exhaust fumes, maybe some oil droplets here and there, some WD40 or CRC spray mist droplets - and I'm just talking about a relatively clean bilge. All this debate about water purity and molecules like we're irrigating somebody's exposed cranium in a brain surgery theater strikes me as really silly. How much water are some of you running through your batteries anyway that a few molecules of calcium are gong to make that much of a difference, 194 gallons in each cell?

[westsailwill]

Originally Posted by Albro359

If you have a proper balanced diet, drinking demineralised water won't do you any harm. You'd have to be drinking an awful lot of it to leach minerals out of your body.
Distilled water and demineralised (or de-ionised) water are basically the same....just water and both are fine for flooded batteries...domestic water is normally full of chlorine, fluoride and depending on where it comes from sodium, calcium, aluminium hydroxides, none of which are good for your batteries.
Distilled water is made by boiling water and condensing the steam which is produced back into water...only water.
Deionized water, also known as demineralized water / DM water (DI water, DIW or de-ionized water), is water that has had its mineral ions removed, such as cations like sodium, calcium, iron and copper, and anions such as chloride and sulphate. Deionization is a chemical process that uses specially manufactured ion-exchange resins which exchange hydrogen ion and hydroxide ion for dissolved minerals, which then recombine to form water. Because the majority of water impurities are dissolved salts, deionization produces a high purity water that is generally similar to distilled water, and this process is quick and without scale buildup. However, deionization does not significantly remove uncharged organic molecules, viruses or bacteria, except by incidental trapping in the resin. Specially made strong base anion resins can remove gram-negative bacteria.
So DI water is not necessarily "cleaner" than distilled water, but in terms of the mineral ions that are not present as far as batteries go, distilled water and DI water are equivalent.

Really straightforward explaination.

[colemj]

Originally Posted by kthoennes

For Pete's sake we're talking about boat batteries that usually live in the bilge with mold spores and mildew and exhaust fumes, maybe some oil droplets here and there, some WD40 or CRC spray mist droplets - and I'm just talking about a relatively clean bilge. All this debate about water purity and molecules like we're irrigating somebody's exposed cranium in a brain surgery theater strikes me as really silly. How much water are some of you running through your batteries anyway that a few molecules of calcium are gong to make that much of a difference, 194 gallons in each cell?

If all those things are getting into your batteries, you should put the caps back on them.

Mark

[fryewe]

I asked my wife (won't call her Admiral...I'll save that for the other thread) to pick up a couple of gallons of distilled water at the local market. She saw some/bought some and brought it home. It was clearly labeled distilled water...but had small print under that said "with minerals added." She picked it up in the infant food section of the market. Went back to the market and found proper distilled water (no minerals) in the beverage section of the store.

[thinwater]

Did anyone actually find a specification or a standard for battery water? These standards exist for antifreeze, for example, but I could find no definitive manufacturer information or anything that gave quantitative reality to damage caused by Ca, Mg, Cl etc.

[bstreep]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

This report contradicts my training that people should not drink real deionized water. http://www.wqa.org/pdf/techbulletins...tionlowtds.pdf

YMMV.

It's over 20 years old.

That being said, your repeated contention that distilled or RO or RO/DI water is harmful to humans and pipes, is pure bunk. Just because you read it on the internet, doesn't make it right.

I'm a molecular biologist by education. I've analyzed RO, RO/DI, and rainwater for many years. I know it may be hard to believe, but rainwater is nearly always less than 10ppm TDS - almost pure. In a good downpour, 2 or 3ppm is common. Certainly lower than a typical RO of 15-20 (don't confuse any of this with RO from saltwater - which is generally over 100ppm TDS).

If your contention is that drinking rainwater is bad for you... There is nothing wrong with drinking RO/DI water. We get plenty of minerals from our diet.