What is Pure Water?
Waters like a magnet, in the manner that water in its natural cycle will eventually through the process of erosion, leach or pull minute to large parts and pieces of whatever it flows over, around or through. Stalactites and stalagmites are perfect examples of this process as they require millions of years to form in caves through the continuous passing of water in its natural cycle. Each stalactite and stalagmite is made of elemental minerals common to the earth, left to form an additional building block due to the water droplets eventual evaporation. Mother Nature never seems to dull our visual senses as we gaze in wonder and awe upon billions of years of patient artistry, the creating of monumental spires, spikes and columns of ancient caves carved and molded in the media of water with a high level of dissolved minerals, stalagmite juice.
Within our daily lives we have witnessed this process on several occasions but never consider that the same forces creating earth formations are at work all around us. The mostly bone white calcium carbonate destroying your plumbing fixtures, the spots left on your drinking glasses, the limestone formations found within the guts of your toilet, the painful passing of kidney stones; these are all common examples of mother nature’s natural rock making force at work.
PURE water is absent any and all dissolved minerals (or dissolved anything’s) and therefore doesn’t have the ability to conduct electricity which gives the water the characteristic of low “Electrical Conductivity”. The dissolved minerals or dissolved anything’s (Dissolution) in the water create and form an ionic chain making it capable for an electrical current to pass through it as a transmitting utility. Example: The power cables of compressed copper act as a conveyance for the electricity to pass from generation to customer’s point of use. The harder the water, i.e. the more dissolution or the more dissolved minerals or dissolved anything’s, the greater that waters ability to act as an electrical conductor and the greater that waters ability to be stalactite and stalagmite juice. So fuzzy logic could rationalize that “the harder or the more dissolved anything’s found in your main water source, the easier it is for that water to make stalagmites.”
“The harder or the more dissolved anythings found in your main water source, the easier it is for that water to make stalagmites.”
Just because it says PURE doesn’t mean it’s PURE. What’s your definition of PURE?
PART PER MILLIONTH is a way of expressing very dilute concentrations of substances. Just as per cent means out of a hundred, so parts per million or ppm means out of a million. Usually describes the concentration of something in water or soil. One ppm is equivalent to 1 milligram of something per liter of water (mg/l) or 1 milligram of something per kilogram soil (mg/kg).
Reverse Osmosis Drinking Systems
There are several ways to test the purity of water. I personally prefer to use a TDS meter or Total Dissolved Solids meter. I believe that the EPA defines PURE water (water absent of any all dissolved anything’s) as being under 010 or 10 (ten) part per millionth total dissolved solids,1 preferably a triple zero 000 reading. De ionization, Distillation and Reverse Osmosis are the three main technologies used today to produce PURE water. In the industry we use the term PURE vs. CLEAN water to place the distinction between the many claims made by water filtration companies selling carbon/activated charcoal filters and throwing around the term PURE when in reality a fraction of contaminants are truly captured. It’s common for me to get calls from friends or potential customers exclaiming their dismay in the quality of their new water filtration system after having placed a TDS meter in a fresh glass of filtered water and finding that it’s higher than the water filtered. This may not always be a bad thing. In most cases what’s happening is that carbon particles are leaching out into the water being filtered. This will eventually stop the more the filter is used and as the suspended ion/particles of carbon finally deplete from the filter itself, the TDS of the filtered water may drop just a few parts below filtered water source but the carbon filter will never produce PURE water.
Super Pure De-Ionization systems
Flexeon COMMERCIAL REVERSE OSMOSIS SYSTEMS
A filter is a hole and something is essentially too big to pass through the hole. Wikipedia: In chemistry, engineering, or household usage, a filter is a device used to separate mixtures. So remember, a carbon filter can never make PURE water, it will only clean the water of the contaminants geared to fit that filters parameters. Britta and PUR filters are incapable of producing PURE water or water measuring under 010 or 10 (ten) part per millionth total dissolved solids.
Wikipedia: Purified water is water that is mechanically filtered or processed to be cleaned for consumption. Distilled water and deionized (DI) water have been the most common forms of purified water, but water can also be purified by other processes including reverse osmosis, carbon filtration, micro filtration, ultra filtration, ultraviolet oxidation, or electrolysis. In recent decades, a combination of the above processes have come into use to produce water of such high purity that its trace contaminants are measured in parts per billion (ppb) or parts per trillion (ppt). Purified water has many uses, largely in science and engineering laboratories and industries, and is produced in a range of purities. Purified water in colloquial English can also refer to water which has been treated ("rendered potable") to neutralize, but not necessarily remove contaminants considered harmful to humans or animals.
This webpage only focus on distillation, De-ionization and reverse osmosis as the (3) three technologies that produce water that is absent of almost completely everything and anything dissolved within its solution and may register a triple zero 000 reading on most TDS meters.
Wikipedia: Deionized water, also known as demineralized 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 sulfate. Deionization is a chemical process which 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. Deionization can be done continuously and inexpensively using electro deionization.
Wikipedia: Distilled water is produced by a process of distillation and has an electrical conductivity of not more than 10 µS/cm and total dissolved solids of less than 10 mg/litre.[1] Distillation involves boiling the water and then condensing the vapor into a clean container, leaving solid contaminants behind. Distillation produces very pure water. A white or yellowish mineral scale is left in the distillation apparatus, which requires regular cleaning. Distillation alone does not guarantee the absence of bacteria in drinking water unless containers are also sterilized. For many procedures more economical alternatives are available such as deionized water and, is used in place of distilled water.
Wikipedia: Reverse osmosis (RO) is a membrane-technology filtration method that removes many types of large molecules and ions from solutions by applying pressure to the solution when it is on one side of a selective membrane. The result is that the solute is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and the pure solvent is allowed to pass to the other side. The common Reverse Osmosis water system WASTES two to 4 gallons of water to produce one gallon of PURE water. The only time I recommend a Reverse Osmosis system to a customer is when that customer is in the process of treating water from a source not being paid for, like in the case of a privately owned well or cistern capturing rain water.
The Distillation Process
De-Ionization
Enlarged image of mixed bed deionization beads. Each bead has billions of ionic link attachment spots per individual dissolved ion. As the water passes over the beads, the attachment spots per bead fill up like cars parking at an event. As the attachment spots on each individual bead fill up, the beads lose their ability to grab dissolved ions passing over them in the water. Once this occurs, the TDS begins to go up exponentially. The more dissolved solids or dissolved anything’s in the water essentially means there’s more cars attempting to park at the event.
