Distillation and reverse osmosis
Distilled water is the purest type of demineralised water. Like water created from reverse osmosis, it has been stripped of minerals and contaminants, and has an extremely high level of purity.
These types of waters are extremely ‘soft’ as all the hardness has been taken away.
In reverse osmosis the impurities are taken away from the water. In distillation, the water is taken away from the impurities, which are left behind as a solid sediment at the bottom of the water distiller.
Osmosis happens in nature when plants use their roots to ‘suck’ water from the surrounding soil. Your cells get their water needs met by osmosis, don’t quote me on this but when you’re dunking a digestive in tea, it is osmosis which soaks it (I’m off to get some biscuits right now). In plants it’s the root which serves as the filter. Reverse osmosis is exactly the opposite, water is pushed through a semi-permeable membrane/filter by applied pressure.
Water distillation also occurs in nature all of the times. Take rain for example, or snow or any other precipitation. Water from the seas and lakes is evaporated by the sun, transported to cooler areas where the steam is condensed. At this point it falls in the form of rain, hail and what not. These are all kinds of water distillation in action! Morning dew is another great example of natural water distillation.
Distilled water can reach the highest purity, and is used all the times in chemistry, by big-pharma, by the cosmetics manufacturers and in any application where purity is vital. With a home water distiller you can obtain water that has a 99.9% purity. This is purer than reverse osmosis, and any other type of filtration available today.
This should have given you a good overview of what distilled water is, so now, what is distilled water used for?