[John Webb]

I believe that the ownership of a still is illegal in the UK without a Customs and Excise (or whatever they call themselves today) Licence. I can recall that they even checked the distilled water still in my old school's chemistry lab once or twice a year.

I have successfully distilled water by producing steam in a wall-paper stripper boiler and condensing it in a large roasting tray floating in a kitchen sink. Took about 20min to get a litre of water for my live steam model. Next time I'll take some pictures and post them.

Regards,
John Webb

 

[John Webb]

QUOTE (Charley Farley Trelawney @ 8 Jan 2009, 16:58) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Would not an automotive shop selling distilled water in 5 litre containers be acceptable? After all it is for batteries. Agree on the deionised, its something quite different.

CFT

I have not found an automotive shop selling anything for the last few years but deionised water - it's cheaper to produce and quite adequate for batteries but not for the live steamers! So approach water in such shops with caution.

Regards,
John Webb

 

[John Webb]

I could buy quite a bit of Hornby's water for the cost of popping down to Somerset for 5 litres! I'll just keep boiling up my own 'as needed', I think.

Regards,
John

 

[John Webb]

Hi again, if you've seen my response under the 'Welcome' section.

Just to explain briefly, this topic on distilled water has been mostly about the Hornby 1:76 (4mm/ft - the British parallel to the more usual HO scale at 3.5mm/ft) electrically powered live steamers. These use about 25ml of distilled water in a small boiler in the tender of the loco - this is heated electrically at between 12 and 15volts at up to 6 amps to generate steam. A servo mechanisim in the loco, linked to a steam valve and controlled by signals sent through the track, open and shuts the valve and also reverses the direction the loco can move.

The loco responds in a completely different way to the electric motor powered models much more common in this scale. It's quite a remarkable system and you can find out more about it at www.hornby.com.

But Hornby are very specific about using only distilled water and in particular not to use the more common deionised water that's sold for steam irons, car battery topping up etc. Apparently it still contains enough chemicals to affect the long-term life of the boiler, which I think is silver soldered rather than brazed.

However, Hornby charge around £6 for a 1 litre bottle of distilled water, so on this topic we've been discussing other sources and means of getting distilled water at a lower cost.

By the way, we are not allowed to run an unlicenced still in the United Kingdom, even for distilling water. At my old school we had to have a licence for the chemistry lab still, and the 'Customs and Excise' people checked it every year to ensure we were only using it for water and not something more potent!

Regards,
John

 

[John Webb]

Steam directed at a cold clean surface will condense back into water. So I floated a nice new kitchen roasting tray on cold water in my kitchen sink and directed steam from the boiler of a wall paper stripper into the tray. Result: about 1 litre of distilled water after an hour or so.

Regards,
John Webb

 

[John Webb]

Keith,
Thanks for the clarification. I should have said that the baking dish I used was a teflon-lined one and I did rinse it with the first 10 minutes worth of distilled water.

Regards,
John Webb

 

[John Webb]

I remember my chemistry telling us the same in the early to mid 1980's.

Would boiling a kettle and condensing the steam on a cold metal plate not do the job ?

Main problem is keeping the plate cold as it absorbs the heat given up by the condensing steam. A better bet might be a 'Pyrex' or similar heat-resistant glass bowl filled with water (possibly iced?) and the steam condensed on the outside of the bowl. Or a large metal saucepan likewise filled with water?