I’m confused if it is a marketing term or if it’s a real way to make safe drinking water? If you distill water you are physically removing contaminants, which makes sense that it is safe to drink. De-ionizing is like removing ions, but what does that mean, is the water now cleaner?
In: Chemistry
DISTILLED water is safe to drink. This is essentially evaporating and condensing the water to remove anything that didn’t evaporate along with the water.
DEIONIZED water is a chemistry thing. It doesn’t necessarily make water unsafe, but it doesn’t make it safe to drink, either.
Normal water is full of ions. Run water through a steel pipe, pick up some Fe+ ions. Run water through the ground, pick up ions like from salt (Na+ and Cl-). These ions are present in minute quantities and give water that “mineral flavor.” Since these ions are charged, you can run the water through an electric filter which grabbs anything charged. This is useful if you want to make sure a few part-per-million chlorine isn’t reacting with a chemistry experiment, but it’s not meaningfully affecting drinking water.
If the water is coming from lead pipes then yes–deionizing will make it safer. But it wouldn’t remove bacteria or pathogens if you’re trying to drink pond water.
Latest Answers