Technically speaking, "drinking water" will not harm the car battery.
The danger that the water would present would be in the form of alkalinity
(carbonates). The higher the alkalinity, the more sulfuric acid in the
battery will be neutralized, thus weakening the battery. However, to make a
significant difference in neutralizing the battery acid, the water would
have to be of such low quality, that it would not be drinkable, both from
taste and a safe drinking aspect.
To meet drinking water criteria, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act in the
US, the dissolved solids content as well as the resulting alkalinity would
be way too low to make any measurable change in the acidity of the battery
electrolyte.
If I had time, I could easily document this in a more scientific manner (so
that few people would know what I was talking about). But just from my
experience as an environmental chemist, we used to do the opposite - we
would measure the water alkalinity by adjusting the water pH with a very
weal solution of sulfuric acid, much weaker than that used in a car
battery. And the contents of a car battery would be more than enough to
neutralize hundreds of gallons of even high alkaline drinking water . So in
terms of adding water to the battery, the dilution is going to have more of
an effect than the carbonates in the water.
But I still add distilled water to batteries as well as to the coolant.
Habit I guess.
David Councill
67 BGT
72 B
At 05:30 PM 2/24/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>I need real cause and effect here. A casual relationship is
>insufficient. "My battery died after adding tap water" doesn't cut
>it. Lots of batteries die (like all of them eventually) for various
>reasons. We have to know why it died, which may require an autopsy with
>photos and chemistry test results. Otherwise I would like to see some
>results of controlled parallel lab tests on batteries using distilled water
>and "other" water. I am looking specifically for any DOCUMENTED reason why
>"drinking water" would actually harm a car battery.
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