Re: IML: distilled or soft water for the cooling system?
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Re: IML: distilled or soft water for the cooling system?



I'm curious about the basis for 'Skinned Knuckles' advice. There may be some reason for using soft as opposed to distilled water hidden in there, but from a chemist's perspective, the explanation is poor. Properly distilled water should not have an 'abundance' of ions (for the record, ions can be positively charged, too!). The only reason I can see distilled water having an abundance of ions would be if the distillation system used was dirty, or a poor choice of a condenser material was used. Yes, distilled water is weakly acidic due to the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere and the formation of carbonic acid, but this is again a weakly acidic system and in your cooling system will be offset by the ability of antifreeze to act as a corrosion inhibitor.

For your radiator, I think the author's of 'Skinned Knuckles' forget that although softened water contains fewer Ca++ and Mg+ ions, it can still be full of all sorts of dissolved solids. Soft water only refers to the type of dissolved solids, not the amount. Granted, the biggest enemy in terms of adding tap water to your radiator is calcium carbonate deposits, which obviously can't form as well with little Ca++ around. From a corrosion perspective, adding softened water is really adding an unknown quantity as its composition depends completely on the tap water you started with, and that varies a lot from area to area. And, as I said in an earlier post, the chloride stuffed into softened water by ion exchange water softeners using sodium chloride is one of the worst things you could consider adding.

So, although I'd love to hear if there's some good science behind 'Skinned Knuckles' recommendation, I'm going to stick to using a mixture of antifreeze and distilled water, with the usual residence time of two years in my cars.

James

Frederick Joslin wrote:

Pure water is naturally ionized to exteny of 10-7 moles/L.
In absolutely pure water at a pH of 7 there are 1x10-7 moles of H+ and 1x10-7 moles of OH- ions per L. One mole of water H+ is 1g; one mole of OH- is 17g. Thus there are a total of 1x10-7 x 18g / L of ions in pure water = 1.8x10-6g/L = 7.6x10-6g / gallon =.00000024 oz / gal ions.
    ----- Original Message -----



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