[The Captain]

I have a question regarding water:

Water in its purest form is 2-Hydrogen, 1-Oxygen. Is it possible that such water exists on this planet?

What I mean is, no matter where on earth you are, when you take a sample of water it's 2-Hydrogen, 1-Oxygen, PLUS whatever's in the area (ex. trace amounts of minerals, microscopic organisms, salt, etc.)

So is it possible for water to exist in an absolutely pure state? No trace minerals, no organisms, nothing - just 2-Hydrogen, 1-Oxygen. And if so, under what conditions (and where) might it be found?

[Astrokel]

You mean H₂O? I don't think so. I remember reading elsewhere before that for a certain number of H₂O molecules, you will find 1 D₂O. So i hardly doubt you will get something entirely pure H₂O but it is good enough. I have no idea about water technologies such as reverse osmosis that could entirely remove microscopic organisms. My bet is no;the most it will remove are harmful ones.

[James Newby]

At the poles is where the water is its purest.  As it has been frozen for such a long time all the salts leech out.  This will stilll have some imputities, but will probably be ultra-trace.

I imagine some fancy lab has managed to produce extremely pure water, probably from oxygen and hydrogen gas.

[The Captain]

At the poles is where the water is its purest.  As it has been frozen for such a long time all the salts leech out.  This will stilll have some imputities, but will probably be ultra-trace.

I imagine some fancy lab has managed to produce extremely pure water, probably from oxygen and hydrogen gas.

In other words, the only place perfectly pure H₂0 could conceivably exist is in a lab.

[Arkcon]

I imagine some fancy lab has managed to produce extremely pure water, probably from oxygen and hydrogen gas.

I often wondered myself if anyone had an application that needed them to do this.  I suppose the hydrogen and oxygen can be made, as pure as possible, but how pure can they really be?  Can we purify them better than we can purify water?  Will they pick up contaminants, in the tubing on the way to the reaction vessel?  And how do we make them react?  With an electrical spark, but what two electrodes?

And what is the new, "pure" water held in?  At least some contaminants can come from a glass vessel, even a fused quartz vessel will release some silica.  Not to mention what you can get from borosilicate.  And soda-lime glass is completely out of the question.  So what's the container?   Rigidly pure platinum-iridium, of the grade used for the kg standard?  Will that leach nothing?  I'm not sure.

What about dissolved gases?  Trace pollutants, carbon dioxide, will dissolve in water.  Can you make a good enough vaccum to remove all traces of them?

So ... perfectly pure hydrogen and oxygen, piped in platinum tubing, into a rigorously evacuated platinum chamber, with a platinum electrode to make the spark.  All to do, what, exactly.

Which, of course, is a question for The Captain: what is the application you're thinking of?  What do you need the purest of the pure water for?

[Borek]

Google 18 MOhm water and ultra pure water.

[Loyal]

I remember from my analytical chemistry class that it is near impossible to get 100% pure water simply because too many sources can contaminate it.  Even the air alone is enough.

I believe a science group had to distill water under a high vac close to 34 times to get it to the point where it was impossible to measure the impurities.