Homemade Steam Distilled Water
Copyright © November 1, 2023 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
In the United States of America, and in most other major countries of the world, people do not think about water until there is a temporary disruption in their normal supply of water. Unfortunately, as soon as that disruption is resolved, then people once again turn their thoughts away from water and they think about more important things, such as which team will win the big game this weekend.
But water always has been, and always will be, more important than anything else in a person's life except for the air that we breathe and the God Who made that air.
Water can be divided into three categories:
- Drinking Water: This is the water that enters our body in the form of drinking water, or as part of a beverage, or as part of the food we eat such as rice or pasta that has absorbed a lot of water as it was cooked. This water must be germ free or we will get really sick.
- Cleaning Water: This is the water that we use to bathe our bodies and to wash our clothes. This water needs to be reasonably clean or it will not serve its purpose of washing our bodies or our clothes. For example, if the water is just a little bit muddy then our bodies and our clothes will become just a little bit dirty if we use that water as wash water.
- All Other Water: This includes all the water not in the above two categories. For example, it includes the water flowing in a creek or stream. That water is drunk by pets and by domestic animals and by wild animals all over the world. And that water is absorbed by trees and plants to facilitate their normal growth cycle. But almost all of that water contains microscopic germs that the human body cannot tolerate. Therefore please do not make the mistake of believing that you can drink that water just because you saw some dog or some bird drink the water.
In the year 1998 I wrote an article about the importance of water and that article appears on my website at the following link: How to Find Water and How to Make Water Safe to Drink.
I am not going to repeat the information in the above article in this article. This article will assume that you already know most or all of the information in the above article.
The purpose of this article is to discuss one of the topics that is briefly discussed in the above article. This article is going to discuss how to distill water in more detail.
Steam distillation is a method that can be used to kill 100 percent of all the germs (bacteria and viruses) in water. Distillation will remove radioactive fallout from water that has been contaminated, including uranium. Distillation will remove heavy metals (lead, arsenic, mercury), fluoride, sea salt, and minerals. Distillation will remove 99.9% of all PFASs, including PFOA and PFOS. Distillation will remove volatile organic compounds and chemicals that have a higher boiling temperature than water (212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius at sea level). But distillation will not remove a harmful compound that has a lower boiling point than water, such as chlorine. However, a basic activated carbon water filter can remove chlorine, pesticides, and herbicides from contaminated water.
The water distillation product that will be discussed in this article is currently available for sale from Amazon at the following link: KITCHEN CROP VKP Brands Stainless Steel Water Distiller. The Water Distiller shown in the picture can be purchased from Amazon for approximately $110.00 on November 1, 2023.
I do not receive a commission or a fee of any kind if you click on the above link, or if you buy the above item. The above link is being provided solely for your convenience.
The above Water Distiller consists of three large stainless steel pots and a plastic water hose. The bottom pot could also be used as a cooking pot if you need a really big 5-quart cooking pot. For example, this size pot would be very useful if you needed to reduce the watery sap from a maple tree or from a birch tree into a thick sweet syrup. Complete detailed instructions are in my book "Grandpappy's Campfire Survival Cookbook."
Amazon has a lot of steam distillation devices for sale but almost all of them require electricity. And electricity may not be available at the same time that you desperately need clean water to drink. The above water distillation device is one of the very few devices that can be used on top of a gas stove or a wood stove in a kitchen, or above the coals of a campfire.
The rest of this article will discuss what I learned when I used the above Water Distiller in the kitchen inside my home.
Discussion
The water distiller consists of the following items:
- Three very large stainless steel pots. Each pot is approximately 11.5 inches (29.2 cm) in diameter plus two handles. When the three pots are nested correctly on top of one another the stack is approximately 13.25 inches (33.7 cm) high.
- A flexible plastic water hose and a metal clamp for that hose. The water hose is used to drain distilled water out of the middle pot. The hose is approximately 16 inches (40.6 cm) long and it has an outside diameter of approximately 3/8 inch (0.94 cm). The white flexible plastic water hose is shown attached to the middle pot in the picture on the right. The metal clamp in the picture is attaching the water hose to the top of the middle pot but this is not the way it is used when the equipment is distilling water.
- An instruction booklet that is 8.4 inches by 5.5 inches (21.3 by 14 cm). It contains eight numbered pages. It is written in English and it is easy to understand. It does not appear to be translated into English by someone who does not speak English as their primary language.
To the extent possible I followed the instructions that were included in the box with the three pots.
I used clean water and a mild soap to wash the inside and the outside of each pot.
- Bottom Pot with a Flat Bottom: The bottom pot would contain the water to be boiled so I washed the inside of the bottom pot two times. But I only washed the outside of the bottom pot once.
- Middle Pot with a Center Funnel Hole for Steam: The center funnel hole is partially visible in the picture on the right. The middle pot would channel the steam from the bottom pot up through the funnel hole in the middle pot and up to the bottom of the top pot. Then the steam would condense on the bottom surface of the top pot and drip back down into the middle pot. Therefore the steam or water would be making contact with the inside and the outside of the middle pot. Therefore I washed the inside and the outside of the middle pot carefully two times.
- Top Pot with a Slightly Rounded Bottom: The steam would make contact with the bottom surface of the top pot and condense into water drops which would fall back down into the middle pot. The inside of the top pot will contain the water that will help the steam to condense more quickly into water drops on the bottom surface of the top pot. Because the top pot has a slightly rounded bottom in the center of the pot, the water drops that condense on this curved surface will slide down and fall into the middle pot and the water drops will not fall into the bottom pot from which the steam was created. Since the inside and outside of the top pot would be in contact with water, I washed the inside and the outside of the top pot carefully two times.
I also washed the plastic tube that would transfer the distilled water from the middle pot to one of my large saucepans for temporary storage.
Finally I washed 3 glass marbles because I was going to put them into the water in the bottom pot. The instructions recommended using 3 glass marbles so that you could hear them bouncing when the water in the bottom pot began to boil. A small bag of glass marbles can be purchased for about $3 at Walmart on November 1, 2023.
The Water Distillation Process:
I put the clean bottom pot on the left front burner on the gas stove in my kitchen. I put the 3 glass marbles in the bottom of the pot. Then I put some cool well water into that pot until the water level reached the line on the inside of the pot. I measured the water as I added it and it took 5 quarts, or 20 cups, of water in order to be in compliance with the manufacturer's instructions.
I put the middle pot on the bottom pot. I followed the instructions and I rotated the bottom of the inside water extraction pipe about 3 degrees to help the water more easily exit the middle pot into the large saucepan that would catch and hold the distilled water.
I put the top pot on the middle pot. Then I added 4 quarts (16 cups) of cool well water to the top pot. I filled the pot up to the line on the pot and I stopped. The instruction booklet said to fill the pot all the way up. I was not sure what that meant so I did not perfectly follow the instructions on this one step. (Note: Later I noticed the illustration below that was printed on the outside of the box and it shows the water level in the top pot to be almost to the top edge of the top pot. Therefore I only filled the top pot about 60 percent full based on that picture. If more water is added to the top pot then the additional cool water should decrease the total amount of time required to distill water compared to the results I achieved. However, after the water in the top pot gets hot then the extra water will lose its effectiveness at condensing water in the middle pot. Therefore my suggestion below of replacing half of the hot water in the top pot with cool water may be a better strategy. This is only speculation because I have not tested this strategy.)
I attached the plastic water hose to the short metal pipe extending out of the side of the middle pot. I placed a clean 10 cup saucepan on the right front burner on my gas stove but I did not ignite that burner. The saucepan on the right front burner was about 5 inches (12.7 cm) away from the bottom pot on the left front burner. I put the end of the plastic hose into the bottom of the saucepan. The bottom of the saucepan was below the water extraction port in the middle pot. Therefore I knew the distilled water would eventually flow into the saucepan.
With everything in the correct position I ignited the left gas burner below the bottom pot and I adjusted the flame so that it was providing medium heat to the bottom pot. I wrote the time on a piece of paper and then I went into the adjoining room and began doing some chores.
The instructions contained a warning about not touching the pots without using a kitchen mitten or a hot pad because all three pots would get very hot during the distillation process. Therefore I wore a kitchen mitten on each hand when I occasionally touched the outside handles of the pots.
Fifty minutes later I began hearing a bounding noise made by the marbles in the bottom pot. According to the instructions this indicated that the water in the bottom pot was now boiling. (Note: If I had put room temperature well water into the bottom pot instead of cool well water then this time could have been reduced.)
Since this was the first time I had used this equipment I checked the equipment approximately every 15 minutes.
After another 45 minutes there was some steam rising from the water in the top pot. I realized that the water in the bottom pot was rising as steam into the middle pot. And the steam and the heat from the bottom pot had increased the water temperature in the top pot to a very low boil.
I looked at all three pots very carefully. There was no steam escaping from the seams where the three pots were touching each other. And none of the three pots were "sweating" and there were no water drops sliding down the outsides of any of the three pots. Based on this simple observation I concluded that the three pots were very well made, and that the distillation process was working properly using medium heat.
4 hours after I ignited the gas burner to start the process there was no water in the large saucepan on the cold burner beside the 3 pots.
4.25 hours after I ignited the gas burner there were 2 quarts (8 cups) of distilled water in the saucepan on the cold burner. When the water level in the middle pot reached the top of the water extraction port, the distilled water automatically flowed to the end of the water hose because the bottom of the saucepan was below the top of the water extraction port. When the top of the water extraction port began to fill with air the water extraction process stopped. I do not know the exact minute at which this process began and ended. All I know is that at 4.25 hours the distilled water had stopped flowing. I immediately turned off the heat to the bottom pot on the left burner and I waited for the pots and the water to cool down.
The top pot still had 5 cups of very hot water in it. Therefore the top pot used 11 cups of water to help condense the steam in the bottom pot into water drops in the middle pot.
The middle pot had 1.5 cups of steam distilled water in it that had not drained into the saucepan on the stove. Therefore I had a total of 9.5 cups of steam distilled water. If the original water had contained germs or radioactive fallout or a variety of other harmful chemicals then those harmful substances would not have been in the steam distilled water if their boiling point was higher than the boiling point of water.
The bottom pot still had 9.5 cups of the original water that I had put into it. That water had been boiled but it had not evaporated into steam and therefore that water had not been distilled. However, the water had been boiled so any germs in the water had been neutralized. But if the water in the bottom pot had contained radioactive fallout or harmful chemicals then the water in the bottom pot would still have contained those harmful substances.
The table below summarizes the above information:
Total of 4.25 Hours using Medium Gas Heat on Bottom Pot.
The 4.25 hours includes 50 minutes before the marbles started to bounce occasionally in the bottom pot.
The table below shows the amount of water in each pot at the beginning and the end of 4.25 hours.
| Container | Start | End | Difference |
| Bottom | 20 cups | 9.5 cups | 10.5 cups |
| Middle | 0 cups | 9.5 cups | 9.5 cups |
| Top | 16 cups | 5 cups | 11 cups |
Taste Test
When the steam distilled water had cooled down to room temperature I drank some of the water. The steam distilled water had a clean fresh pure taste and it did not taste like boiled water because the boiled water had become steam and then it had condensed back into water.
Conclusion
20 cups of water yielded 9.5 cups of steam distilled water in 4.25 hours and there was also still 9.5 cups of boiled water in the bottom pot. Therefore 1 cup of water was lost during this process but that water did not escape as steam from the seams between the three pots.
11 cups of water were converted into steam in the top pot and that steam was lost. If something could be put a few inches above the top pot to catch some of the steam then the steam may condense into steam distilled water and slide down into some type of water storage container. This might increase the amount of steam distilled water that was generated by this equipment without consuming any more fuel. However some of the steam must be allowed to escape to avoid safety issues.
9.5 cups of distilled water is 2.3 quarts of distilled water.
If the process had been allowed to continue until most of the water in the bottom pot had been converted into steam then it would have taken approximately another 3.5 hours and this would have increased the yield to approximately 18 cups (4.5 quarts or 1.12 gallons) of steam distilled water. This would have been enough drinking water for one person for one day and it would have required a total of approximately 7.75 hours on top of a gas stove. This is about 0.6 quarts of water per hour and this includes the time to bring the water to a boil. The yield would be approximately 4.5 quarts of distilled water per 5 quarts of water or a conversion rate of about 90%.
If this process were continued 24 hours per day then it would produce enough drinking water for about 3 people.
However, this process requires a lot of energy. Water could be distilled over a wood burning fire but it would consume a lot of firewood.
The total amount of time to make distilled water could be reduced if approximately half of the hot water in the top pot were ladled out of the top pot into a water storage container. Then enough cool water should be added to the top pot to bring the water level back up to the line on the top pot. This would decrease the temperature of the water in the top pot and this should increase the speed at which the steam condenses into water drops on the bottom surface of the top pot. I did not do this so I cannot offer any statistics on what impact it may have. (Note: This would also reduce the amount of steam created by the water in the top pot and this could be a disadvantage if you are capturing the steam rising from the top pot. However, it may be an advantage if water is scarce.)
I do not recommend boiling all the water out of the bottom pot because this will cause stains on the inside of the bottom pot and it will scorch the outside of the bottom pot. Before all the water in the bottom pot is gone, the middle pot should be lifted up and more room temperature water should be added to the bottom pot. Then the process could be continued but it will take time for the water in the bottom pot to start boiling again. (Note: Never add cold water to a hot pot.)
Except for God, nobody knows how the future will unfold. Distilling water would not be my first choice for providing drinking water for my family. However, if our water supply becomes polluted with radioactive fallout or with harmful chemicals, then I may be forced to distill our water to keep us alive. I pray that I never have to do that. But I am glad that I have a three-pot system that could be used if distilling water becomes absolutely necessary.
However, if you read my 1998 article about water that is mentioned at the top of this article, then you will see that it is also possible to distill water if you have a pressure cooker with a steam release value. It should also be possible to distill water if you have a big cook pot that has a steam relief vent in its lid that allows steam to escape. Both of these options would require some copper water pipe and you would need to arrange your equipment as illustrated in my article that appears in the link at the top of this page.
May God Bless,
Grandpappy.
Postscript:
If you intend to use the really big bottom pot for cooking, and if you will occasionally need a lid for that pot, then you can purchase a lid of the correct size at the manufacturer's website below. The price of the lid is approximately $30.00 on November 1, 2023. The link below is provided for your convenience and I do not earn a commission or a fee of any kind if you click on the link or if you buy something from the manufacturer.
Lid for Model VKP1140-1 Pot.
Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com