Question:
If you own an e-STILL emergency distilled drinking water system fromPureSurvival.com you can!

Your e-STILL emergency distilled drinking water system can turn highlycontaminated seawater into safe drinking water for your family. With ane-STILL in the house you can turn virtually ANY water source no matter howquestionable (even water from your swimming pool!) into safe drinking water.

This is NOT filtration!! The contaminated water is BOILED and only the PURESTEAM is captured and turned into safe DISTILLED drinking water.

PureSurvival.com is proud to bring you a unique product specificallydesigned and engineered to provide you with the highest quality emergencydrinking water when nothing else will...

Answer: In survival applications, distillation is only rarely used, andthen usually only as a method to obtain water, not to purify it. Indesert survival, can dig holes in the sand or dirt and make solarstills by stretching plastic across the top of the holes to recoverwater from the ground. The hole is dug, a container placed at thebottom, thin plastic placed over the hole and secured around the edgesby piling dirt on it, then a pebble placed in the center over the can.

Subsurface soil usually contains some water, but can increasestill output by putting vegetation or impure water in the hole. Theheat of the sun evaporates the water which deposits on the coolerundersurface of the plastic, drains down the slope provided by thepebble, falls into the can or container. If have a bit of plastictubing extending from the container to the edge of the still can suckthe water up from the can without disturbing the setup of the still.

The container can be an empty food can and costs nothing. The plastictubing might be worth 30 cents. The plastic over the hole can beanything, but the cheapest is usually the thin plastic sheets sold aspainters drop cloths, and you can usually get 8 x 10 foot sheets ofthis for under a dollar. Which is fortunate, for usually need severalsuch stills to produce an appreciable amount of water. Can, of courseuse thicker and more durable plastic if you like. Since contaminationby organic solvents wouldn't be a problem, water would need no furthertreatment.

Distilled water, though, has a very flat and unpalatable taste as allthe dissolved air has been removed. The taste can be improved bypouring it from one container to another several times or bubbling airthrough it.

The only other small scale distillation unit have ever seenadvocated for producing drinking water was a solar still unit onceproposed for use on life rafts to distill sea water for drinking.However, it really wouldn't produce much water, and was prettyuseless. Modern methods just use ion exchange resins to take the saltout of the sea water.

Distillation is used to produce water for ships, submarines, etc.where have a lot of energy to produce the heat necessary. It takes alot of heat energy to boil water as anyone can easily verify forthemselves. Estimate your daily drinking water requirement. Can youget by on what a #10 can would contain? Fine, fill the can withwater, and heat by whatever means you are using for your survivalstove. See how long it takes all the water to evaporate. That isthe same input you are going to need to use a "survival still", as youcannot distill water without evaporating it.

As Kathryn has suggested, if you really want to make a smallstill, it can be made much more cheaply than you can buy one, althoughwhy anyone would go to the trouble of distilling drinking water istotally beyond me.

If want distilled water, collect and drink rain water. That isthe natural distilled water. The water that comes down as rain isn'tmagically produced in clouds. It is water vapor that has beenevaporated [or "distilled"] from ground or sea water, is condensed,and falls as rain. Many Australians, even those on city watersystems, prefer rain water for drinking and cooking. Few bother togive it any further "treatment".

The cheapest solution for purifying most drinking water is simplythe addition of a few drops of sodium hypochlorite solution, Lugol'siodine solution, or a few crystals of potassium permanganate. Personally, I tend to favor Lugol's iodine as is more suitable for hotclimates. In addition, for long term group survival, the personresponsible for water purification can carry the solid ingredients[iodine and potassium iodide] and make up the Lugols iodine solutionfor members as needed.