Water stills, also called laboratory water distillers, heat water to a volatile vapor phase thus separating it from nonvolatile impurities. While the terms deionized and distilled water are often used interchangeably, there are significant differences in the types of impurities that are removed from each. Distilled water systems remove more than just charged ions—they can filter out microbes, non-volatile organic compounds, most minerals, and many chemicals.
While laboratory apparatuses to distill water through boiling and collection of condensation have long been in use, modern laboratories water distillation units offer a number of benefits over the manual systems. Not only do these systems greatly speed and simplify water distillation processes, many include built-in features to minimize contamination risk. When shopping for a laboratory water distiller, it is important to keep an eye on these features as well as the distiller’s capacity, the run time, and whether it is suitable for purification processes that require multiple distillations.