Distilled water for cooling....article

Sounds like a marketing spiel to me.

I wouldn't believe any of it, well known antifreeze and coolant makers specifically say use DISTILLED WATER in their concentrates to mix.
I'm certain that the formulation has buffers and neutralizing agents to counter any ion robbing from the water.
 
The chemist in me reads this and it makes my hair stand on end.

I know this has been thoroughly hashed out, but anything that DI/distilled water "leeches" will come to equilibrium quickly and it just stops happening for all intents and purpose.

As another general comment, at my last job(where I spent 10 years) we had a "house" DI water system that delivered better than 1MΩ/cm purity. Actually I should say we didn't routinely monitor it, we just had a simple go/no go light that told us when it went below 1MΩ, which told us to change the resins(or really call Culligan to come out and do it). Every few months, I'd sample it throughout the building, and I'd routinely measure 1.1-1.5MΩ/cm.

The plumbing for that system was mostly HDPE fittings running through plastic tubing. I'm not sure what type of tubing it was, and that's something I should know. During normal use, a pump circulated water constantly through the system and resin beds, with tap water feeding in as needed. I periodically inspected the system all through the building, some 1500 feet of tubing per my calculations, and never observed any cause for concern.

A few labs had their own ultra high purity water system, which used ion exchange and carbon filtering to scrub the house DI water down to a target 18.1MΩ/cm resistivity, and then do a final output through typically a 5µm filter. If I actually saw a system read that value, I'd tell them they needed to service it, as normally the best a system could do was ~16-17MΩ, and readings up into the 18 range typically meant bacteria or other contaminants on the electrodes in the conductivity flow cell(and it's amazing how many PhD chemists would complain when their freshly serviced system was "worse" than before service and couldn't comprehend why it would read artificially high, but that's another discussion). When I was in graduate school, I used one particular long-in-the-tooth Millipore system daily. That was water you used if you had a real need for it, even though a lot of people in my lab would use it for everything out of habit. It could do funny things if you let it. Many parts of the system were HDPE, but it also had a whole lot of teflon.
 
This is what Audi Customer Racing says for their R8 LMS GT3.

Screen Shot 2021-05-09 at 10.43.19 AM.png
 
What's the big deal? Just fill the engine with 50/50 premix and let someone else worry about it!
Pre-mix is about 75 percent more expensive that non-pre mixed when priced per gallon of usable coolant.

Example
G05 premix at autozone $17.95 per gallon
G05 not pre mixed at autozone $19.95 per gallon
distilled water at walmart .80 per gallon

Ford F350 needs four gallons of G05 coolant.

Premix total cost before tax = 71.80
Mix yourself cost before tax= 41.50

Savings in actual USD using mix yourself over premix on a vehicle requiring four gallons of coolant: $30.30 (before sales tax)
 
Hi guys
Please read the article and tell me what you think.

https://www.hyperlube.com/blog/blog/why-you-should-never-use-distilled-water-in-your-cooling-system/

I normally use dustilled for a coolant flush, but this article suggests using soft water.

I plan to do a flush this weekend, just trying to figure out the best thing to use for a 10 year coolant. Prestone.

I am not using the additive. Thanks everyone.
Many years ago (early 1980's)I read a mercedes benz FSM regarding coolants and the use of distilled water. MB said not to use distilled water because it is hungry for minerals. Been puzzled about that since. Now I read the above article and it appears the authors read the same MB FSM.
All manufacturers, I believe, now recommend to use distilled water in their engines. Go with what your car or coolant manufacturer recommends.
Hyperlube says their stuff contains "molybdate" to combat the alleged dangers of distilled water. I believe molybdate is a component of many coolants(?). Perhaps its there for this reason? Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
Many years ago (early 1980's)I read a mercedes benz FSM regarding coolants and the use of distilled water. MB said not to use distilled water because it is hungry for minerals. Been puzzled about that since. Now I read the above article and it appears the authors read the same MB FSM.
All manufacturers, I believe, now recommend to use distilled water in their engines. Go with what your car or coolant manufacturer recommends.
Hyperlube says their stuff contains "molybdate" to combat the alleged dangers of distilled water. I believe molybdate is a component of many coolants(?). Perhaps its there for this reason? Thoughts?
If true it's yet another instance of an entity that only knows enough chemistry to be dangerous.
 
As long as you are not using hard water it is fine.

People have been using de-ionized, distilled, RO filtered, etc water for decades and so far the only concern people have is the hard water, not distilled vs RO filtered, etc.
 
I've e-mailed Hyperlube and they never responded to my questions! FYI. Mobil responds in a couple of hours.
 
I use water from my dehumidifier. I don't care how much you paid for your water softener it's putting sodium in the finished product. So don't use it for plants. Probably insignificant for people but with house plants it will accumulate in the pot......
 
I use water from my dehumidifier. I don't care how much you paid for your water softener it's putting sodium in the finished product. So don't use it for plants. Probably insignificant for people but with house plants it will accumulate in the pot......
The sodium ions accumulate in the pot? And then what?
 
Back
Top