Paul commented on Ole and Jarrids comments...
>I just got around to reading the Wed. post, so this is a bit late. I
>take strong exception to both of the above quoted comments. I do not
>have a Ph.D. behind my name, but have worked for some 30 years as a
>water treatment chemist and am currently the tech. dir. or a regional
>water treatment firm and am a long time member of NACE (national
>association of corrosion engineers). Our product line includes
>corrosion inhibitors for cooling systems for big marine diesel engines.
>We are not into the commercial antifreeze market.
...snip
Whew!
While I was at a customer site several years ago, I thought it funny that there was a sign at the coffee machine that said "do not use deinozed water to make cofee or drink".
I almost laughed, but it was a very serious thing to these people.
It seems that no long after thier DI processing station was installed, people started to use the packaged water for just about everything.
People made coffee, drunk it straight, so on and so forth.
A chemist told me that before long some people started getting sick. The DI water was being injested by these people, and robbing their bodies of minerals and electrolytes.
These people were literally pissing their health away.
Anyhow, the chemist told me that you ought not to put distilled or DI water in your coolent system too, for the same reasons.
If you put in a buffer, I can see that the buffer could prevent corrosion, even with the DI water, which Ive been told has a PH of around 6.0.
I have performed an internet search on the topic, and it seems pretty consistant across the board for people to recommend the use of distilled water in cooling systems.
Why?
I'm not sure, seems to me you'd want good soft water with a PH really close to 7.0.
Perhaps its a cleanliness issue, of someone is afraid of putting minerals into the water.
Me, I'm worried about the opposite, negative valance minerals comming out of the engine coolant system.
Maybe it just doesnt matter in the larger scheme of things.
Jarrid Gross