In the distillation process, steam from boiling water is condensed which cools it from a hot gas back into a very mineral-free liquid distilled water which collects in a very clean reciever.
Distilled water will evaporate without leaving a trace, unlike most drinking water. More delicious if you ask me.
The dissolved minerals do not evaporate so they are left behind in the boiling vessel. Toxic minerals or not, sodium, calcium, lead, whatever, that's what the solid "scale" left over consists of. This is the traditional physical separation procedure to produce greatly purified water.
But distillation is not perfect, things that are not like minerals can be present in the feed, and if the impurities are things that can evaporate, they will distill in the same way the water does and so not be left behind in the boiling vessel. Basically these are considered Volatile Organic Compounds, things like paint solvents or alcohol themselves are distilled similarly (in industrial quantities before sale) and then they don't leave any residue when they evaporate during use either.
Volatiles if present can sometimes can be reduced by distillation if a certain percentage of water vapor is allowed to escape after it first gets boiling, taking some volatile impurities with it without being collected into liquid form, only letting cleaner water vapors be hitting the condensor later. Some PFAS are like this and anything volatile in significant amounts still may not be acceptable after distillation alone, so to remove these further treatment would be needed like carbon filtration before and/or after a distillation step.
fuzzfactor|11 months ago
In the distillation process, steam from boiling water is condensed which cools it from a hot gas back into a very mineral-free liquid distilled water which collects in a very clean reciever.
Distilled water will evaporate without leaving a trace, unlike most drinking water. More delicious if you ask me.
The dissolved minerals do not evaporate so they are left behind in the boiling vessel. Toxic minerals or not, sodium, calcium, lead, whatever, that's what the solid "scale" left over consists of. This is the traditional physical separation procedure to produce greatly purified water.
But distillation is not perfect, things that are not like minerals can be present in the feed, and if the impurities are things that can evaporate, they will distill in the same way the water does and so not be left behind in the boiling vessel. Basically these are considered Volatile Organic Compounds, things like paint solvents or alcohol themselves are distilled similarly (in industrial quantities before sale) and then they don't leave any residue when they evaporate during use either.
Volatiles if present can sometimes can be reduced by distillation if a certain percentage of water vapor is allowed to escape after it first gets boiling, taking some volatile impurities with it without being collected into liquid form, only letting cleaner water vapors be hitting the condensor later. Some PFAS are like this and anything volatile in significant amounts still may not be acceptable after distillation alone, so to remove these further treatment would be needed like carbon filtration before and/or after a distillation step.