I would ideas on a small backpacking size pocket distiller. I was thinking that all i needed was a pot with lid and some coiled copper tubing that I could store inside the pot when not in use.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated

One of the neatest setups I've come across was a backpacking tea kettle with a plastic tube coming out of the spout. The steam condensed in the tube and water dripped into a cup.

What are we distilling? Salt water into fresh? If so, your source vessel is going to take a beating- you might want to think about enamel.

I really didn't plan on distilling anything specific but rather was thinking that by adding some copper tubing to my titanium pot and lid I would be able to distill anything from sea water to flood water in the even of an emergency. But I would guess that you would need lots of fuel to distill a gallon of water a day or so.

Keep in mind that flood waters would likely have petroleum products in them and those could distill before water would, which means you'd have distillated petroleum in the "cean" water.

Somewhere I have a book, can remember the author or title (or what I had for breakfast) right now, but this guy, from England, walked all the way around Baja California, Mexico, following the coastline almost all the way. He got a large portion of his drinking water by that method. He carried a regular old stainless steel "tea pot" (like you heat water on the stove with, little whistle in the cap), and some stainless steel tubing. Using sea water and drift wood, it worked like a champ...

To be effective your need a cooling jacket for the tubing. It would take making a hole in the lid of the pot and fastening a small copper flang in the whole and then the tubing to the flange. I guess you could drape a wet towel over the tubing and keep pouring water on to the towel to facilitate cooling. It is feasable but takes more then just some copper tubing. and an ordinary pot lid you need to make some modifications.
cheers

the book was "The Complete Walker" by Colin Fletcher, his was a clean gallon paint can with copper coiled tubing that would fit to a flange on the lid and could be stored inside.

Nope, mine was by a Brit named Ian something I think, walking around Baja during a midlife crisis. I had forgotten about Colin writing about it also...

I don't know of any small distillers that you could take backpacking, but I bought this self assembly distiller:

http://www.conquestinc.com/lifesaverdistiller.htm

It works, but the plastic hose makes the distilled water taste like crapola. The "food grade" hose may be safe with food/water, but it can't handle the heat. I guess I need some copper hose, but haven't followed thru on that yet.

Wouldn't the petroleum products be floating on top? So you should be able siphon them off & if that didn't work you should also be able to bring the water up to a gentle boil first & let the lighter chemical boil off first. Then distill the water. Having said that I've never tried to distill flood water.

Interesting...just finished reading _The Complete Walker IV_ by Fletcher & Rawlins...

It is certainly practical to distill fresh water from sea water if you have the inclination and the _fuel_.

If you are "hiking down the California coast" as he was, did you miss the fact that 1) he had hidden caches of food and water and 2) he periodically stopped at "roadside diners" and such to "tune into civilization"?!

I'm not knocking it. It's just not as Herculean as it sounds.

That being said, the safest method I've been able to find of purifying water is to boil it. Fitlers and chemicals will do if boiling is not available, but are not infallible.

And nothing will get petroleum distillates out of your groundwater except time and elevation (re: hurricane katrina, and my old unit deploying reverse osmosis water units to LA).

Moonshiners let the first bit of 'shine "pass", i.e., pour it off for a bit before bottling the rest.

Means the fluids that condense before the alcohol (lower boiling point) are gotten rid off.

If you discarded everything that boiled off before 100 C, and everything that boiled off afterwards, you should have pure water <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Your mileage may vary.