wrote in news:49edff44$0$48228$815e3792
@news.qwest.net:

I doubt you'll find *one* case of sickness from drinking water made
from
a properly maintained RO system. But it does bear repeating that RO
is
a very good incubator for water bugs if not maintained and operated
sensibly. Not that hard to do as you obviously have experienced.

Keith Hughes



Yecch.....Reading all this I'm hugging my distiller for security and to
keep from throwing up lunch. My digital thermometer puts the hard
boiling sewage from the city water tap at 108C when she's in full
operation, here at sea level. There is no incubator to hide in. You
never forget your first steam/hand encounter when there's a tiny steam
leak. NOTHING survives, no matter how gross the calcium deposits that
DIDN'T become kidney stones I used to suffer becomes.

Let's all take my little water test my distiller passes without
exception....

Place an extra clean glass quart jar in your oven and heat it to 250F
for 15 minutes to ensure its biology doesn't survive. Let it cool,
completely, to room temperature. Fill it with your best shot RO water
and tightly cap it. Sit it on the dock in the hot summer sun for a
month.

Drink it to show me it's safe to drink.

After 6 months of South Carolina summer on my patio, distilled water is
as clean and biology-free as the day I filled that jar. City water
grows like a swamp! You can even see stuff MOVING! RO water wasn't
quite as bad as city water.....but none of the RO promoters would take
my offer and drink it all green and growing like that.....as I
confidently drank the distilled water that had been sitting in the sun
all summer....

What a shame all that waste heat that COULD be distilling seawater just
goes out the exhaust on a boat.....wasted.

--
-----
Larry
You can tell there's very intelligent life in the Universe
because none of them have ever tried to contact us.....

Gogarty wrote in news:20090421-210944.92.0
@Gogarty.news.bway.net:

You make a very good point. Are there not emergency stills that work on
sunlight?




Yes. Only trouble is they are evaporators, not stills. Biology grows
right up to around 180F so these solar evaps are easily contaminated, a
source of nasty bacteria because they are just right inside in temperature.

If you don't see it boil, it just isn't safe.



--
-----
Larry
You can tell there's very intelligent life in the Universe
because none of them have ever tried to contact us.....

Larry wrote:
Gogarty wrote in news:20090421-210944.92.0
@Gogarty.news.bway.net:

You make a very good point. Are there not emergency stills that work on
sunlight?




Yes. Only trouble is they are evaporators, not stills. Biology grows
right up to around 180F so these solar evaps are easily contaminated, a
source of nasty bacteria because they are just right inside in temperature.

If you don't see it boil, it just isn't safe.

Well, for most common pathogens, you are pretty much correct. However,
there are many spore forming thermophiles whose spores will just laugh
at you if you try to kill them with boiling water. Throw in 10 spores
of G. stearothermophilus in your boiling water. They'll still be happy
to grow up after boiling for 10 hours.

And you can throw in 10 B. subtilis/atrophaeus spores in your dry jar
and put in the oven at 250°F. They'll still be viable 600 hours later.
You'd need 10 minutes at 320°F. Dry heat sterilization is much less
effective than moist heat, for most all types of bugs, so jack up the
temp when you're trying to sterilize things in an oven.

Keith Hughes

wrote in
:

Larry wrote:
Gogarty wrote in news:20090421-210944.92.0
@Gogarty.news.bway.net:

You make a very good point. Are there not emergency stills that work
on sunlight?




Yes. Only trouble is they are evaporators, not stills. Biology
grows right up to around 180F so these solar evaps are easily
contaminated, a source of nasty bacteria because they are just right
inside in temperature.

If you don't see it boil, it just isn't safe.

Well, for most common pathogens, you are pretty much correct.
However, there are many spore forming thermophiles whose spores will
just laugh at you if you try to kill them with boiling water. Throw
in 10 spores of G. stearothermophilus in your boiling water. They'll
still be happy to grow up after boiling for 10 hours.

And you can throw in 10 B. subtilis/atrophaeus spores in your dry jar
and put in the oven at 250°F. They'll still be viable 600 hours later.
You'd need 10 minutes at 320°F. Dry heat sterilization is much less
effective than moist heat, for most all types of bugs, so jack up the
temp when you're trying to sterilize things in an oven.

Keith Hughes


My offer still stands to put sterile jars of your RO water and my
distiller water on the dock for the summer then we'll both drink what's
in it the last day of August.....

I'm sure DoD has some superbugs in their illegal arsenal of biological
warfare agents no distiller can kill.....But, when it comes to purifying
hose water from the sewage the city delivers as drinking
water....Distillers work much better than anything available, including
RO.



--
-----
Larry
You can tell there's very intelligent life in the Universe
because none of them have ever tried to contact us.....

Larry wrote:
wrote in
:


snip

My offer still stands to put sterile jars of your RO water and my
distiller water on the dock for the summer then we'll both drink what's
in it the last day of August.....

But, the reality is this is irrelevant as a test, and totally
meaningless as any form of standard. The air you breathe is not
sterile, nor is the food you eat, nor is the finger you pick your nose
with. RO water is *not* guaranteed (nor likely) sterile...so what? The
container you store it in, and the glass you drink it from is not
sterile either. That's why you chlorinate water that's going to be
stored, because it will always have some baseline bioburden, and stored
under ideal conditions, without a biocide or preservative, will grow
out. When your fecal matter comes out sterile, then you can start
worrying about making sure your drinking water is always *sterile* (of
course, you'll be dead at that point, but...)

I'm sure DoD has some superbugs in their illegal arsenal of biological
warfare agents no distiller can kill.....But, when it comes to purifying
hose water from the sewage the city delivers as drinking
water....Distillers work much better than anything available, including
RO.

These are not superbugs, or DoD creations. G. stearothermophilus is
common in hot springs, and is used routinely for qualification of moist
heat sterilization processes. In fact, it won't even grow at all below
about 125°F. B. subtilis/atrophaeus is a common bacillus
species/subspecies (found in soils, grasses, and even used in gardens as
a fungicide), used routinely for qualification of dry heat and gamma
irradiation sterilization processes. Neither is considered a human
pathogen, which is why they are used as bioindicator (challenge) organisms.

Distillation works fine, and other than energy usage, doesn't have too
many downsides. But you need a lot more specificity when it comes to
defining "better" relative to drinking water production. Tens of
millions of people worldwide drink RO water without an issue. High
temperature distillate will typically have a lower bioburden *from the
still* than RO. But, when coupled with the charcoal bed needed to
remove volatile organics that carryover from the distillation process,
you have the same type of bioburden issues. Carbon beds are perfect
incubators, providing a marvelous substrate, far better than RO
membranes in fact, as well as a ready carbon source for bacterial growth.

The point is, both systems work fine for drinking water, as long as the
process is understood by the user, and the inherent process risks are
addressed through routine maintenance and sensible use. Long term
storage of water, without a suitable growth inhibitor, is just bad
practice irrespective of the purification process used.

And I *still* say you must have been bitten by an RO unit as a child... :-)

Keith Hughes

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:03:55 -0700, wrote:

And I *still* say you must have been bitten by an RO unit as a child... :-)

Keith Hughes

I think you're right, Keith! Larry is apparently just a tad fanatic
about drinking water :-)

Keith wrote in a previous post:
My
experience is with units in the 2000-3000gph range, typically running
24/7 with treated city water as feed. Still require routine cleaning,
and biocide treatment.

I'm curious. Do these systems use the same 10% recovery rate?

More curiosity points...

I wonder how surface area, volume, etc. scale up. That's about 1,000
times as much product water, so does that mean surface area of the
membrane is 1,000 times more?

What's the difference between seawater, brackish water and fresh water
membranes? I've read it's the permeability, but are the "holes"
smaller or larger for the seawater compared to the fresh water? Or the
same size; is it the pressure rating instead? Is the seawater more or
less prone to fouling than the fresh water?

No answers required. Just wondering.


The bottom line, in my opinion, is that an RO system on a cruising
boat, especially on one like ours that spend months "away from
civilization", is the best answer for all fresh water needs. We're a
sailboat with solar panels and a wind generator that keep the
batteries up.

Yes, it does require care and work. I would say it's more work taking
off the sailcover and replacing it than to maintain the RO system.
Like the sailcover, if you don't do it, you'll pay for it. In the case
of the sailcover, a new mainsail; in the case of the RO a new
membrane.

Rick Morel

wrote in :

Tens of
millions of people worldwide drink RO water without an issue.

Tens of millions of people drink lake water, too, "without an issue". But,
I don't think we're being honest with any of them over the LONG TERM what
these pathogens will do to them over time.....



--
-----
Larry
You can tell there's very intelligent life in the Universe
because none of them have ever tried to contact us.....

"Larry" wrote in message
...
wrote in :

Tens of
millions of people worldwide drink RO water without an issue.

Tens of millions of people drink lake water, too, "without an issue".
But,
I don't think we're being honest with any of them over the LONG TERM what
these pathogens will do to them over time.....



--
-----
Larry
You can tell there's very intelligent life in the Universe
because none of them have ever tried to contact us.....


No one gets out alive.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:02:50 +0000, Larry wrote:

wrote in :

Tens of
millions of people worldwide drink RO water without an issue.

Tens of millions of people drink lake water, too, "without an issue". But,
I don't think we're being honest with any of them over the LONG TERM what
these pathogens will do to them over time.....

I have to wonder about what was in the water that YOU drank.

Larry wrote:
wrote in :

Tens of
millions of people worldwide drink RO water without an issue.

Tens of millions of people drink lake water, too, "without an issue". But,
I don't think we're being honest with any of them over the LONG TERM what
these pathogens will do to them over time.....

You're assuming that RO water *has* pathogens in it. Lake water
typically does. But the fact that so many do drink lake water "without
an issue" gives you a very good sense of the *scale* of the problem
you're so concerned with. As a practical matter, very few bacteria
present any problem at all in the stomach unless their population is
very high, and a well maintained RO systems generate very low bioburden
permeate.

Keith Hughes