Water Distillation

Water Distillation
Gift From Ken a Water Distiller

the mi woodsman

Kenneth Kramm

Link to My

[KennethKramm]

Great video Bob.  Your approach gave me several ideas  that I want to test in later versions of the still. Awesome approach.  I like the use of sand to cool the condenser and wood as a barrier between the boiler and condenser.  Several recommendations may improve the quality and quantity of output.   There should be essentially no salt in the distilled water.  1) Don't over-heat the boiler.  Overheating will cause overflow to enter the top section.  2) Don't clamp the sections together; clamping may increase contamination and defeat the purpose of having a top section  3) Ensure that the steam / water always flow down hill.  This will reduce back pressure and increase quantity/quality of output.  3) Use a smaller fire/heat source.  This will allow the condenser coil to stay cooler.  4) Cool the condenser coil with additional damp sand / water rag.   5) Try using a larger diameter condenser coil (3/8 inch rather than 1/4 inch) than the one I gave you.  I used the 1/4 inch diameter copper tubing on the small version of the still.  The 1/4 inch tubing might not be large enough for the larger boiler.     This change should help reduce back pressure, because there may be fewer / no water back-up AND more water may flow from the boiler.  The small version of the still that I tested (in YT video) produced 1 cup of water  per 30-40 minutes.  Water quality (based on conductivity testing) was between commercially distilled water and tap water from my home.  Output from the condenser was not HOT, rather it was luke warm, with no steam coming from the collection cup.

I encourage others to test variations of this basic still design.  Improvements come from trial and error. Learning comes as much from failures as from successes.   We won't know what works and doesn't work until people try different approaches in different situations.  Your video demonstrates awesome creativity and honest results.  Hopefully others will use it as a springboard to test different ways of problem solving.  

Thanks for sharing your results.   Ken

[karenchakey]

Ken is such a great guy! Nice demo Bob! I didn't know the first couple of ounces was poisonous, nice to know.

[hogkillerjp]

great review, looks like it worked well may have to build this puppy, thanks

[HectorPlasmic]

I missed the river, glad to see you back there.

[BlakeRTyler]

Awesome! I like the radiator clamp idea. I think that would work well. Also uncoiling the tubing and arching it up, out, and away from the can before bringing it back down would probably help keep in cool. 

[OregonMike]

Love the taste test at the beginning! That is giving it 100%

[themiwoodsman]

i like your bulldozer Bob !! talk about the perfect fire pit ! you got me on this one Bob ! thanks for the shout out brother ! i really appreciate it and good luck on my giveaway, now to watch the rest of the video !! great idea for a prep or emergency ! pretty cool, thanks for sharing 
atb john

[Dabobeans]

Bob, use some of the charcoal from the fire that has cooled down, and let the water drip through it and into the cup. This gets rid of the flat taste and absorbs any petroleum by products that turned to a gas at a lower temperature than boiling water. All home distillers do this and the water tastes great.

[RiverBendSurvival]

3 things:
1 Nice video
2 shake the water before you drink it
3 need a cooling rag on the coils

[WiltshireMan]

It could be a life saver for someone one day but like you say  think a few mods would "up the output". The only problem with stills is they are quite bulky.
Sandy

[sjohnson]

Distilled H20 tastes terrible LOL. Looks like a very good design. Thanks!

[billyjoedenny]

great job bob, just knowing the behind seines .. not sure how i would do it, but the heat exchangers should allow the first of the steam  condensate to run back into the bottle. yep salt would have helped with the taters, , lol. ill have to see what i can plumb together for the project..
your package should be there in a couple days..
..bill

[MrFullautoak]

i have seen the tubing done with medical tubing, but the tube went from the bottle up in the air like 2 or 3 feet then came back down, it looks like a upside down u shape, of course there is a metal connector to the bottle for a while so the rubber don't melt, the height is supposed to help keep contaminates in the bottle, hope it works well for u the way u have it...

[reaganl.]

FYI, distilled water always tastes flat...you can by gallon jugs of it in stores. Its best use is for topping off vehicle batteries IMHO. Generally speaking if you don't have enough cooling going on you can lengthen the amount of copper tubing and make each turn of the tubing broader. This will slow the flow rate down and give more contact with the copper which both help cool the water. I have seen some stills use a few horizontal turns first then a small collector vessel before dropping to vertical coils to the catch container. That would probably be too much to have to haul around in a backpack though!

[BigFootWalker]

I can't help but wonder when you would use this distiller?  I can see when you are by the ocean like Ken did in his video, but I certainly don't see this as something you would use on a regular basis.  But it has got me thinking on it.  Thanks!

[CraftedChannel]

Why not use a section of rubber hose to connect a barb on the thumper keg (top steam chamber).  Use a rubber hose so you can put the evaporator coil a few feet away from the still?  This would also aid in storing the coil around the still when in your pack.  I would think you would want the coil in shade of possible and perhaps something to direct the wind over the coils would help even more.

[ibpn]

can you put corn mash it and distil firewater

[adventureswithfrodo]

If your distilling water there will be NO salt in it, you have contaminated you effluent. Therevare a number of issues with your process, weight being the first and fore most. Distilled water has no smell. Yes it is goos to lose the first drops expecially if you suspect chemical contaminatin but then still it depends on how close vaporization temps are. Also don't let it boil dry.

[SamiPekkarinen]

Thats a nice concept you got there, bob. How quickly does it distill lets say a litre? You said first couple of ounces are poisonous, why is that?

[xq]

Can someone provide me a link/name for the 2 water bottles used for this distiller? I'm thinking about making one