is condensate water potable?

[markct]

seems to me it would be? got wondering today after i got a letter from bascoms about there expectations of anyone who sells syrup to them, and among the many usual food grade etc, i see they also say running potable water available to clean equipment. got me thinking well yea thats what i have at the garden hose i use to clean outside the sugarhouse, but inside the sugarhouse we have our sink with a stainless holding tank that catches the water from the condensate off the hood, makes about 5 to 7 gal and hour, and we use that for washing most stuff, hydrometers etc. i dont see why it wouldnt be considered potable, we even have made tea with it before! just was curious if it was considered that or not.

[BryanEx]

Condensate is potable providing all surfaces are clean. Evaporated water is the same as distilled water.

[markct]

i thought so, and the tank is stainless, the sink is stainless, and the pipe that connects it is copper water pipe and dairy hose to conect to the tank, all of which seems potable to me!

[maple flats]

As long as all surfaces it touches are clean it is potable.

[green4310]

In my case, when it is boiling hard, the sap bubbles splash on the preheater pipes and mix with the condensate some, even with the defoamer. I would not say it is bad for clean up, just not pure water.

[cherryfarmer]

how is this. My inspector told me the condasate had to go on the ground because it was not safe. I tried to explain it came from the sap steam inside the evapator but she stuck to her guns. That is well................... you can read my mind. That is kind of like you can not drink gatoraid in the orchard because it is not safe. (true) coming to a sugarbush near you soon

[maple flats]

remember this, the original use for an RO is to get potable water from bad water. The RO removes the impurities and the permeat is potable (as long as there were on disolved chemicals or other things that pass thru the membrane).

[Brent]

I think she's off base too.

How can boiled water be safe when it goes into a jar with a lot of sugar, and not be safe when it goes into another jar from the condensate run off. If it's bad then the stuff we sell is about 40 times less safe.

[Gary in NH]

Be careful, "potable water" is vague term. Generally from a water treatment perspective it means free of chemicals, impurities or micro-organisms that would make someone ill or adversely affect their health. These standards (for water) would be set by the EPA Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Permeate water from a reverse osmosis system that processed sap should have virtually no minerals and bacteria in it and be just water. However, no membrane or water filtration process will guarantee 100% reduction of any contaminant. If you check the mineral content of sap in terms of Total Dissolved Solids" or TDS you will find it has 150 to 200 ppm of minerals. Check the TDS of your permeate and it will be +/- 99% lower. I checked my raw sap on Sunday - sap was 161 mg/l and permeate was 1 ppm. TDS does not measure organic matter or organisms. The difference in the two numbers shows you that SOME minerals and by assumption, some sugar will pass through the membrane. In my opinion the biggest risk in the potability question in the sugar house would be micro-organisms. Although RO membranes will reject micro-organisms you won't find one RO membrane that is designed or rated to remove them. There is always a manufacturers disclaimer about using RO on water of unknown microbiological quality. The risk is organisms colonizing on the concentrate side of the membrane and then making it through the membrane or around a seal. It only takes one organism to contaminate the product (rinse) water. If you wanted to take an additional step to insure your permeate water was free of micro-organisms you could pass it through a UV light before going back into the system as rinse water. Even the UV light rating will be at a 99.99% kill ratio. In reality I think the risk is very low. RO soaps are caustic and will kill bacteria on the membranes, the boiled concentrate is sterile on the way to becoming syrup. If someone were to say your rinse water is not potable they would need to take a sample and test it to identify a contaminant and confirm it is non-potable. The only other way to apply the definition would be to require you to use a water source such as a municipal supply or a well that has been previously tested to meet the requirement of potability.