Deionized water

[Glenn S]

Hello everyone, I hope all is well at your place.

I am about to change out antifreeze in my 900X and my New Holland tractor and I have a question about deionized water that a number of antifreeze suppliers are recommending rather than distilled water.

I did a google on what deionized water is compared to distilled and I can't understand the difference except deionized water is 4X's as expensive.

Does anyone have an opinion as to if deionized water is better than distilled water? I use green ethanol glycol in a 50/50 mix.

Thanks to all who answer.

 

[mcfarmall]

I'm no water expert...know just enough to make me dangerous. We use a dealkalizing water softener that provides anion soft water to the boiler. It uses caustic injected into the brine tank when regenerating. You're most likely overthinking the whole thing. I suppose you could use Water For Injection in your cooling system but the conductivity is so low it would probably eat holes in the engine block.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Deionized water will NOT allow electrons to flow through it,used a LOT of it in the Xray spectrometers I maintained 4 decades ago.
As for using it in tractors...hogwash...NO car, truck,JEEP, offroad equipment has ever used DI water for what, 100+ years ? if, IF, it was necessary we'd have seen the reason in at least a few of the millions and millions of vehicles that have been on the road for ,um, well, the past 100 YEARS.
Sounds more like a marketing SCAM, some nephew of a 3 letter guy, needed a job, so Uncle 'helps' him out....than ACTUAL need of the DI water. Yes, the 'science' says it 'should' be better BUT do a 'reality' check.
Heck I used creek water to refill my '67 Stang one year,never had a problem after that.. I can't be the only guy who did that......

 

[Glassman13]

Hello everyone, I hope all is well at your place.

I am about to change out antifreeze in my 900X and my New Holland tractor and I have a question about deionized water that a number of antifreeze suppliers are recommending rather than distilled water.

I did a google on what deionized water is compared to distilled and I can't understand the difference except deionized water is 4X's as expensive.

Does anyone have an opinion as to if deionized water is better than distilled water? I use green ethanol glycol in a 50/50 mix.

Thanks to all who answer.

I worked for a major auto company, Ford, and my duties involved the fluid fill equipment, they use and have elaborate deionized water system and all water used is deionized. Doesn't really help you though. But it must be good stuff! Tough call though.

 

[Bmyers]

It remines me of having your tires nitrogen filled which a few tire places use to push to try to make extra money.

If you are flying a large jet, filling your tires with nitrogen makes sense. Driving your F-150 around town, not so much.

My very basic knowledge of radiators are that the older the fluid the more likely it is to carry an electrical charge leading to increase in rusting. Yet, following the suggested flushing/replacement schedule will reduce this from occurring.

There a people with a whole lot more mechanical knowledge than me, that will come along and explain the details, but as GreensvilleJay pointed out, this is not a major issue otherwise you would see lots of vehicles requiring it.

 

[lynnmor]

I would stay with distilled water, it should be nothing but H2O with no minerals. The DI water was run thru a process that took care of the ion problem, but there may still be contaminants in it.

 

[imnukensc]

Distilled water and deionized water are essentially the same thing. The only thing different is the process used to make them. Deionized water is made by flowing water through various resin beds which removes impurities while distilled water is made by boiling and then condensing the resulting steam. Buy whatever is cheapest.

 

[Tooljunkie]

Chrysler reccomended de-mineralized water. That’s it.
even distilled water is marginally better. Remember back when coolant was green? And a head gasket failure was rare? Typically back then the coolant changed itself when a water pump sprung a leak.

 

[lmichael]

Just use distilled water. It's cheap, it's easily available as well. You just want to avoid water that has a lot of minerals basically. They can precipitate out, and cause scale buildup and so on. You will not go wrong with plain old distilled. No minerals, no impurities to worry about. Also the PH is where it should be to work well.

 

[random]

Distilled water and deionized water are essentially the same thing. The only thing different is the process used to make them.

Sorry, this is factually incorrect.

Deionized water: https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1743

"Non-ionic contaminants may persist."

Distilled water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water
"Distilled water is water that has been boiled into vapor and condensed back into liquid in a separate container."

You can still have dissolved solid contaminants in deionized water:

Let's say you dissolve 1/4 cup each of salt and sugar in a gallon of water. The salt breaks up into sodium and chloride ions, while the sugar molecules remain intact but distributed throughout the water. Deionizing this will remove the SALT contamination, but not the SUGAR. Distilling will remove the sugar (technically, distilling will remove the water into another container, leaving the sugar behind). So distilled water has less impurities.

Ask yourself this: would you put sugar water in your radiator?

 

[skeets]

AHHH HAAAAA one more good reason for having a still

 

[hagrid]

Sugar water would probably be better than cat pee.

 

[random]

Sugar water would probably be better than cat pee.

Tastes better at least (or so I would guess)

 

[Glenn S]

AHHH HAAAAA one more good reason for having a still

Now that a good plan my friend!

 

[RCW]

To be honest, I have normally used tap water for dilution of coolant. Never had issues.

Just a few years ago I finally broke down and used distilled. I'm comfortable with that.

An alternative is to buy a pre-mix.

No "dilution solution" required....

 

[dochsml]

I have over 20 years of experience in the optical field working with DI water. There is really no such thing as DI water if it comes in a pail. Water does not like being purified. It likes being dirty (to a point). A good way to think of it is that the cleaner and purer the water, the more it is like a sponge for contaminants. It very much wants something to be dissolved into it (it is a solvent after all). If you had a bucket of DI water and carried it across the room, it would no longer be DI water as it would pull ions and contaminants from the air and settle back to something that could conduct electricity again. The only way to maintain DI water is to constantly polish it by sending it back through a mixed bed of resin to re-remove the ions. If you want a pure form of water that is stable, you have two basic options, RO water and Distilled water. Generally DI water starts out as RO water before being polished. It works very much the same way as a kidney dialysis machine running the water through a membrane. Distilled water is theoretically as clean as RO water if you trust whatever the water condenses to as being clean. My opinion is to use RO or distilled water as DI water is not really possible unless someone has a DI tap right at your tractor and also not necessary and possibly dangerous. DI water will rust stainless steel. This sounds like a gimmick.

 

[twomany]

I have over 20 years of experience in the optical field working with DI water. There is really no such thing as DI water if it comes in a pail. Water does not like being purified. It likes being dirty (to a point). A good way to think of it is that the cleaner and purer the water, the more it is like a sponge for contaminants. It very much wants something to be dissolved into it (it is a solvent after all). If you had a bucket of DI water and carried it across the room, it would no longer be DI water as it would pull ions and contaminants from the air and settle back to something that could conduct electricity again. The only way to maintain DI water is to constantly polish it by sending it back through a mixed bed of resin to re-remove the ions. If you want a pure form of water that is stable, you have two basic options, RO water and Distilled water. Generally DI water starts out as RO water before being polished. It works very much the same way as a kidney dialysis machine running the water through a membrane. Distilled water is theoretically as clean as RO water if you trust whatever the water condenses to as being clean. My opinion is to use RO or distilled water as DI water is not really possible unless someone has a DI tap right at your tractor and also not necessary and possibly dangerous. DI water will rust stainless steel. This sounds like a gimmick.

All that you have written about DI water pertains to distilled water as well.

In fact, impurities that happen to have boiling/condensation temperatures similar to H2O will be carried along and right back into the "purified" water.

And as stated. Even the container the water is held in will be "dissolved". Water is the universal solvent.

Batteries or radiators, I use distilled water cause it's easy to get, (inexpensive)

For radiators, I stain and save the water from the basement dehumidifier. Knowing that the water has lingered in contact with the aluminum condenser coils is OK to me.

 

[Tire Biter]

in the mechanical contracting world, we used to have to pipe DI water either in plastic or stainless piping due to it’s corrosive nature.

 

[Nicfin36]

I have access to a lab of sorts at my workplace and we have a DI water machine. I have been using that for a while as it is free. I did a bit of reading and see that both DI water and Distilled water are corrosive by themselves, but once mixed with coolant, it is considered a non-issue. as it is no longer pure water.

 

[imnukensc]

I'll stick with my previous answer. Simple? Yes. Factually incorrect? No. Part of my job for 30 years was making water. Lots of it and all kinds of it, but starting with dirty, muddy, lake water that fish and geese crap in, animals of all sorts die in, and people pollute with God only knows what is not as simple as those articles make it sound. My knowledge doesn't come from some incomplete wiki article or an incomplete answer to a basic chemistry lab question.

Use whichever you can find cheapest. I'll say it again----they're basically the same. The final process to achieve them is not.