Distilled/deionised water

Fern

Hi,
Hope everyone has had a good summer. Even if you normally work over the summer, I hope it’s been a quieter time to catch up on things.

So here is my first question(s) to kick off the new term. My brain is still on holiday mode 😊

My water still is out of action and I think I may need to get a replacement heating element. The make/model of the water still is a Pure-Hit (Bhanu basic PH4 MK-1). I don’t know where the water still was purchased from (before my time here) and I can’t seem to find this make/model in any of the usual supplier websites. Does anyone have this same water still? If so, do you know which company supplied the item so that I can try and source a replacement element? If not, I’m wondering if another make of heating element might fit - are they generally a universal size?

Alternatively, I would be interested to hear if anyone uses a different system to produce distilled/deionised water e.g. filtration/reverse osmosis system? I’ve had a look on SSERC but can’t see any info though CLEAPSS has a guide on pro/cons of different methods - will maybe ask SSERC if this doc can be accessed.

Thank you 😊

Fran

Hi Fern

I think I may have a similar still.
It was supplied by Hamilton Laboratory Glass as far as I’m aware.
The boiling chamber needed repaired a few years ago and they provided an excellent and good value service. They may possibly be able to help with the heating element, worth an email. Link to website below.
https://hamiltonlabglass.com/
Hope this helps.

Fern

Fran

Hi Fran,

That’s great thanks - I will email them.

Still happy to know if anyone uses an alternative to a water still 😊

TechyJohn

Hi Fern

We use one of these https://vittascientific.com/product/deioniser-elgastat-b114-with-four-c114-cartridges-no-battery/

Seems to work OK, I fill a 20l aspirator as my main source and top this up as necessary, it takes around 35 minutes to fill from empty. You only have to replace the cartridges, the frequency of the change depends on the water quality in your area (and how fussy you want to be!), our water has very little in the way of dissolved solids so I just change ours once a year.

The cartridges are expensive though and you have to pay for them out of the science budget, whereas the money to run the still doesn’t.

Hope this helps 🙂

Fern

TechyJohn

Thanks.

frazerm

TechyJohn

I have this one too. I’m impressed you get it to last a year per cartridge my meter tells me every few months I need to replace mine :(

I second that it’s expensive to replace the cartidges and I believe they’re only available from vitta and sls select education sls being the cheaper

TechyJohn

frazerm I don’t use the wee gauge that’s supposed to tell you when to replace the cartridge, when I started the experienced Tech that was helping out told me not to bother with it and just replace the cartridge once a year. I know that we should base the replacement based on effectiveness/usage rather than time but nobody’s ever complained and we haven’t experienced any problems so I stick with that.

frazerm

TechyJohn Ahh I see, I didn’t get that handover advice so I’ve just followed the instructions on the bottle/meter lol. I do find the slower I run it the longer I can keep the meter in green.

sho

We only ever had one of these deionisers at my last school https://www.fishersci.co.uk/shop/products/aquatron-deionizer-housing-accessories-4/p-7184903

Probably not ideal but it’s all the budget would stretch to.

TechyJohn

sho I wonder if this is actually any better than what we use.

Goaty_McGoatface

sho looks to be better value than the Elga deionisers. Some of the suppliers are charging crazy prices for the Elga brand, you can actually buy on Veolia’s own website at half the price in some cases.

I like that with this one you can see when the resin changes colour and know it’s time to change cartridge. The conductivity meters always seemed like a bit of a con.

sho

Goaty_McGoatface The colour change for us was quite slow so I would say I only changed a cartridge every 3-4 years. Small school though.