[HN Gopher] Brewing Clean Water: The metal-remediating benefits ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Brewing Clean Water: The metal-remediating benefits of tea
       preparation
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2025-02-25 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pubs.acs.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pubs.acs.org)
        
       | jqpabc123 wrote:
       | Ok, so tea leaves can absorb some dissolved metals.
       | 
       | What could be better than that?
       | 
       | How about a drip coffee maker? A drip coffee maker creates little
       | steam explosions to push water vapor to the top of the unit where
       | it condenses and "drips" down over the coffee.
       | 
       | Since steam is being produced, in essence, distilled water is
       | being used which if I understand the physics correctly, should be
       | relatively free of metals.
        
         | killingtime74 wrote:
         | Well a water filter could do it all better than that. I use a
         | reverse osmosis system at home. The runoff goes to the garden
        
         | ryansouza wrote:
         | Drip coffee doesn't use mainly condensed steam but uses the
         | steam pressure to push the rest of the hot water through the
         | pipes
        
         | horsawlarway wrote:
         | Err... not so much. Most drip coffee makers are basically
         | airlift pumps, where the air is from the liquid boiling to
         | steam.
         | 
         | They're nifty little pumps, but they're absolutely not
         | "distilled water" in the sense that you're imagining - It's not
         | steaming up, condensing, and dripping. It's steaming up,
         | pushing a bunch of liquid water up a small tube, and then
         | burping the whole payload onto the coffee, including any and
         | all impurities that are already in the water.
         | 
         | Example video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV8vZqHd0ao
         | 
         | They're used lots on budget aquaponics/hydroponics/aeroponics
         | setups because they can push water up surprising heights with
         | nothing but a cheap aquarium air pump, or - in the case of a
         | drip coffee machine - a cheap heating element.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | All of that said - you're still running that water through
         | ground coffee and then a literal filter. I'd not be surprised
         | in the slightest to find it also removes a lot of things.
        
       | blacksmith_tb wrote:
       | I drink a lot of tea, and I do think there's pretty good research
       | on its health benefits (flavonoids and catechins, e.g.) but it's
       | always funny to realize that its number one health benefit is
       | that it requires boiling water (or almost boiling) before
       | drinking it (not such a plus in the developed world, but for most
       | of the history of tea drinking, quite significant).
       | 
       | I'd be curious to see how much metal adsorption we're talking,
       | but Sci-Hub doesn't have this one yet...
        
         | Kon-Peki wrote:
         | https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/02/brewing-tea-re...
         | 
         | Far more info, though it does lead back to the above link for
         | downloading the paper
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-02-25 23:01 UTC)