Remineralizing Purified Water

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BingDing

BingDing

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kettlebell said:
kiran said:
Why on earth does it have fluoride though?

Flouride is a natural substance found in volcanic filtered water. It occurs naturally in most mineral waters.

I just learned the trace mineral drops I use have 1 ppm of Fluoride, twice what's in San Pellegrino. Crud. And that is from the Great Salk Lake in Utah, so I guess it's all over the place.

Chemi, that is a fascinating factoid. If I add calcium acetate to a jug of water would calcium fluoride precipitate out and sink to the bottom? I guess that assumes the fluoride in the water is sodium fluoride, though. It'd be cool if there was a simple way to get rid of it.
 

Chemi

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Here in Australia they use sodium fluoride and fluorosilicic acid, not sure how the ratios vary around the world :x

In small quantities it's really hard to "precipitate" things since its in such small amounts, a carbon filter might be able to remove it once its an "insoluble suspension" in the water but this makes me wanna work in a lab so I can play around with expensive equipment and find little things like this out <sigh>
 

WilltoBelieve

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Carbonation of the water will help dissolve salts.
I post the following for technical info.
I would just use carbonates, bicarbonates, and table salt... leaving out hydroxides and sulfates.


http://blog.khymos.org/2011/01/30/diy-mineral-water/

http://blog.khymos.org/2012/01/04/miner ... -la-carte/

Mineral waters à la carte
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by Martin Lersch / January 4th, 2012

Cloning popular brands of mineral water is now simpler then ever before with the updated version of the mineral water calculator!

When I blogged about DIY mineral water last year it was mainly a theoretical exercise since I didn’t have the required salts at hand. My experience was limited to adding some baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to water before carbonation. Luckily Paul Hinrichs tested the calculator! In the meantime I have purchased the required salts and with several kilograms in total I’m probably well stocked for the next decade! Based on the output from the calculator, I mixed the salts required to clone San Pellegrino, added water and carbonated the mixture. And the good news is that it works! The water tastes great and I’ve been enjoying cloned mineral waters every day now for the last couple of weeks.

Some changes have been made to the mineral water calculator (Updated! – scroll down for download options) since I last posted:

* a simpler worksheet more suitable for printing has been added
* more mineral waters have been added to the database, covering TDS (total dissolved solids) levels all the way up to more than 4000 mg/L
* potassium bicarbonate, magnesium chloride and calcium nitrate are made optional and can be left out if desired (it’s still a little unclear to me to what extent these can be detected at the typical levels found in mineral waters)
* one can now chose between using either hydroxides or carbonates of calcium and magnesium, depending on availability (it should be noted however that some waters high in bicarbonate may require the use of the hydroxides – not quite sure about this though)

A spoon full of mineral salts is required for the preparation of 1 liter of San Pellegrino mineral water.

Instructions for how to prepare the mixture of salts
Start by chosing the mineral water you want to clone from the drop down list. My advice would be not to start with the waters having very high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) (except Kessel and Vichy Saint-Yorre since sodium bicarbonate dissolves easily). Aim for a TDS in the range 200-1500 mg/L (the list of all mineral waters in the rightmost worksheet is viewable and sortable). At the lower end you may not detect much mineral taste at all. At the higher end the mineral taste becomes quite pronounced. You can click the check boxes to include/exclude some salts. If known enter the composition of your tap water (your local water company should be able to give you these figures). I suggest that you weigh out the salts for 10 or even 100 liters, otherwise the amounts of salts will be in the low milligram or microgram range, requiring expensive lab scales. Mix the salts well. It may be god to start by mixing the salts present in the lowest concentrations first to ensure a homogeneous mixture.

How to make a cloned mineral water
Weigh out the approximate amount of salt (prepared as described above) needed for the amount of water that your carbonation vessel holds. At this point it’s doesn’t need to be very accurate, so if you have weighed it once you can simply need to remember which spoon you used and the size of the heap. Note that the different mineral salts vary greatly in density, so you should calibrate the heap used for each mineral salt mixture. Add the salt to the carbonation vessel and fill it up to the mark with water. The water will now turn opaque and whitish as the salts are suspended in the water (see picture above). Carbonate carefully and, depending on whether the water is high in carbonation and/or bicarbonate, try to hold the carbonation pressure for a couple of seconds extra before letting the pressure out. This allows a little more carbon dioxide to dissolve. Screw on the cap immediately to prevent the carbon dioxide from escaping. In some cases it may be necessary to repeat the carbonation step after some hours. Once the salts have dissolved (i.e. the water becomes clear) you can enjoy your very own home-made mineral water!

Several of the mineral salts have are not soluble in tap water, hence the opaque look to the left. After carbonation however they dissolve rapidly.

So far I’ve made up the salt mixtures for San Pellegrino (total dissolved solids, TDS: 1109 mg/L) and Gerolsteiner (TDS: 2488 mg/L). The first works like a charm, even when all salts are added simultaneously. This is possibly due to the high amount of sulfates which seem to dissolve more easily. Gerolsteiner is more tricky, partly due to the high TDS and the low amount of sulfate. I made it using carbonates instead of hydroxides, hoping that this would require addition of less carbon dioxide to neutralize the base. But after two days and 2-3 extra additions of carbon dioxide the salts had still not dissolved completely and this puzzles me. I certainly need to repeat this experiment. Darcy O’Neil states in Fix the pumps that the order of addition does matter. I’m not quite sure if that really is the case as most of the salts have a very low water solubility to start with, and the carbonic acid is the reason they dissolve. But maybe there is something I’m overlooking here? It could be that Gerolsteiner is easier to do with hydroxides, but Paul Hinrichs also had some trouble getting all the salts to dissolve for Gerolsteiner.

Some of the salts may be tricky to obtain, but the synonyms and links to Amazon below may be of some help:

* CaSO4·0.5H2O = Plaster of Paris (check availability from Amazon)
* MgSO4·7H2O = Epsom salt (check availability from Amazon)
* CaCO3 = Chalk (check availability from Amazon)
* NaHCO3 = Baking soda
* NaCl = Table salt
* Mg(OH)2 = Milk of magnesia (check availability from Amazon)
* Ca(OH)2 = Slaked lime, pickling lime, CAL (check availability from Amazon)

Before you head of to Amazon or some other place to order salts I should probably add some words of warning: make sure that the source you find is suitable for consumption! Some technical qualities of mineral salts may not be intended for food use, for instance due to the presence of heavy metals or other contaminants.

Note that some of the salts are available with varying amounts of crystal water. If you use other salts than those specified (i.e. anhydrous salts or salts with more crystal water) the molecular weights in the spreadsheet need to be adjusted for this. I guess that if you are familiar with the concept of crystal water, you’ll easily figure out the correct molecular weight and how to update the calculator according to the specific salts you chose to use.
 
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BingDing

BingDing

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WilltoBelieve said:
Carbonation of the water will help dissolve salts.
I post the following for technical info.
I would just use carbonates, bicarbonates, and table salt... leaving out hydroxides and sulfates.


http://blog.khymos.org/2011/01/30/diy-mineral-water/

http://blog.khymos.org/2012/01/04/miner ... -la-carte/

Dang, WilltoBelieve, those are awesome references! Thanks much. I think it's time to get a soda stream and try some experiments.

I have some calcium carbonate from a local home brew store. I mixed a little with vinegar and tried it. It made the water milky but tasted pretty good. Chemi is right, there's no way I could ever see if a tiny amount of fluoride precipitated out.

This was a really productive thread, thanks to everybody who added to it.
 

WilltoBelieve

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Rachel said:
BingDing said:
Thanks, agreed about the salt. I'm trying to figure out if bicarbonate affects gastric acid and digestion in the stomach.

It's interesting you mentioned S Pelligrino, Birdie. That is the only water that I could find that publishes their mineral content. It is, in mg/L

Calcium 170
Sodium 33
Potassium 2.6
Fluoride .55
Magnesium 50
Bicarbonate 210
Nitrate .58
Chloride 52

There is no consensus on whether pure water is bad for you but I'm going with the theory that it is. There are studies saying hard or mineral water is heart protective.

The Wiki page on hard water cites a reference recommending water with 40-80 mg/L of Calcium and 20-30 mg/L of Magnesium.
My favorite mineral water is Gerolsteiner Sprudel from Germany; it's bubblicious! Very high mineral content with a nice dose of lithium :)
Check it out:

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) 2488 mg/l
Calcium (Ca++) 348 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++) 108 mg/l
Sodium (Na+) 118 mg/l
Potassium (K+) 10.8 mg/l
Bicarbonate (HCO3-) 1816 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-) 39.7 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--) 38.3 mg/l
Fluoride (F-) 0.21 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-) 5.1 mg/l
Silica (SiO2) 40.2 mg/l
Lithium (Li+) 0.13 mg/l
Manganese (Mn++) 0.39 mg/l
Barium (Ba) 0.014 mg/l
Hydrobromide (Br-) 0.12 mg/l
Strontium (Sr++) 2.9 mg/l
Ammonium (NH4+) 0.08 mg/l
Hydrogene-phosphate (HPO4--) 0.07 mg/l
http://www.mineralwaters.org/index.php? ... arval=1183


I've also been using Gerolsteiner as my drinking water for some time. I find tremendous comfort in it, both psychological and physical. The whole experience of it is much better than for example- taking Na2HCO3... I find industrial Na2HCO3 to be so hateful, like a slap in the face. Of course, every now and then a slap in the face can be productive... but for regular use Gerolsteiner is easily obtained and feels great.
 

kettlebell

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BingDing said:
WilltoBelieve said:
Carbonation of the water will help dissolve salts.
I post the following for technical info.
I would just use carbonates, bicarbonates, and table salt... leaving out hydroxides and sulfates.


http://blog.khymos.org/2011/01/30/diy-mineral-water/

http://blog.khymos.org/2012/01/04/miner ... -la-carte/

Dang, WilltoBelieve, those are awesome references! Thanks much. I think it's time to get a soda stream and try some experiments.

I have some calcium carbonate from a local home brew store. I mixed a little with vinegar and tried it. It made the water milky but tasted pretty good. Chemi is right, there's no way I could ever see if a tiny amount of fluoride precipitated out.

This was a really productive thread, thanks to everybody who added to it.

Yes! Thankyou BingDing :salute That saves me processing egg shells. I will go to my local home brew store this weekend and pick some of that up to use instead of egg shell.
 

Peat's_Girl

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Sep 17, 2014
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Rachel said:
\
My favorite mineral water is Gerolsteiner Sprudel from Germany; \
Hey! They sell this one nearby, thanks for mentioning it was German or I would have never put 2+2 together! I kept passing it wondering if I should try it or stick to Canada Dry...
 

Watson350

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Jun 19, 2017
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Is the fluoride content in Gerolsteiner/san pelligrino something to be concerned with? I also drink 5 750 ml gerolsteiner mineral waters a day, the calcium content is 345 mg/L, is that too much?
 

omnivoracious

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My favorite mineral water is Gerolsteiner Sprudel from Germany; it's bubblicious! Very high mineral content with a nice dose of lithium :)
Check it out:

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) 2488 mg/l
Calcium (Ca++) 348 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++) 108 mg/l
Sodium (Na+) 118 mg/l
Potassium (K+) 10.8 mg/l
Bicarbonate (HCO3-) 1816 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-) 39.7 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--) 38.3 mg/l
Fluoride (F-) 0.21 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-) 5.1 mg/l
Silica (SiO2) 40.2 mg/l
Lithium (Li+) 0.13 mg/l
Manganese (Mn++) 0.39 mg/l
Barium (Ba) 0.014 mg/l
Hydrobromide (Br-) 0.12 mg/l
Strontium (Sr++) 2.9 mg/l
Ammonium (NH4+) 0.08 mg/l
Hydrogene-phosphate (HPO4--) 0.07 mg/l
http://www.mineralwaters.org/index.php? ... arval=1183
Yeah it's awesome! I can regularly find it at Whole Foods. When I buy it by the case I can get a 10% discount which definitely helps.
 

mr.mag

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Nov 24, 2016
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the fluoride in san Pellegrino is naturally occurring - in an email ray said it is. of no concern and that high calcium and mag are beneficial
 

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