You can find many water distillers available in the market to make the job painless and more straightforward. They are designed to be used both at home and for commercial purposes. However, if you want to save some penny in your pocket, you can get high-quality distilled water without spending much. The process is time-consuming for sure, but people still ask how long does it take to distill water.
Distillation is to remove the hardness, micro-organisms, and contaminants from the untreated water. Before knowing about the time that the process will take, let us first get familiar with the basics.
What’s The Science Behind Distillation?
Distillation is a process using which we can separate two liquids having different boiling points. When the water is boiling, vapors form from the mixture with the lowest boiling temperature’s richest components. The process first came into practice around 200 AD, where the seawater is distilled for drinking purposes.
The process was very time-consuming and expensive in the fuel used to distill fresh water from the seawater. To make one gallon of newly distilled water, use an equal amount of fuel to be burned for the boiling purpose.
So purified compounds will turn into vapors first at even a small temperature range, i.e., 2-3 degrees Celsius. As the distillation progresses, the concentration of the lowest boiling components starts decreasing.
Hence, a time will come when the pure compound is not available to be distilled further. The temperature of the equipment used for boiling will start changing. There will be an increase in the temperature.
It will happen till the boiling point reach the compound having the second-lowest boiling temperature. Once the temperature is stabilized, we can get another pure fraction. So this process continues until all the fractions related to the original mixture will be separated.
How Long Time Does It Take to Distill Water?
There is no particular figure to determine how much it takes off you distill a certain amount of water at home. However, we can take science to make it a bit clear to understand and calculate its logic. We can determine what all factors are related to the process and act accordingly to save our time.
Let us consider the kettle for the distillation process. This scenario shows that 1 kg of water will take around 3,36,000 joules of energy to convert it to 100 degrees Celsius.
Now the one kg of water from the liquid state will take almost 3,360,000 joules of energy to transform into steam at the same temperature. So from this concept, we can relate the fact that there is a difference of about ten times of energy used in both processes.
Let us see how time is related to energy. Science says power equals energy per time. So the power that we usually measure in kilowatt can be measured by joules per second.
By considering the same principle in another manner, we can say, time equals Energy per Power. So from this equation, we can clearly understand if power is higher, then the resultant time will be less.
Therefore, the time needed to distill a certain quantity of water is directly proportional to the power output. It can be applied by the cooktop on the flask to boil the water inside it.
If you want to make the process faster, then you need to ensure high wattage should be applied. So this can generate desired energy inside the container quickly with the water to be treated for distillation.
Conclusion
Pure H2O with a dull and flat taste is separated from other contaminants by boiling the water and converting it into a vapor. The next step is to collect the steam to let it condense back into a liquid form in another container. It can be a straight answer to how to make distilled water with a kettle.
By the way, the average rate of distillation records about 20 drops per minute. The process should occur slowly since the vapors are condensed into liquid form. If you want to prepare one gallon of distilled water, it is seen that it will take around five hours by boiling 5 gallons of water.
If we consider commercial water distillers, then they consume a lot of electricity units. They also demand time-consuming regular maintenance for them to work well and produce the desired output.
Industrial-grade large distillers can form distilled Water faster than ones used in homes. It is said that an industrial distiller can produce about 2-3 gallons of fresh distilled water in an hour. On the other hand, the standard home distiller can generate about one gallon of distilled water simultaneously.