Tap water vs distilled vs coolant for compressor?

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I’ve had a 50/50 mix in my Yong Heng for 2 1/2 years. I live in northern Minnesota. Just tore it down tonight. Coolant passages were very clean. No sign of overheating observed. Had 3 gallons in a covered 5 gallon bucket for cooling. I keep it in a heated (40degrees) shop. If we had a long power outage the shop temp could drop below freezing. 

compessor died the other day. HP piston failure. New Omega on the way. I’ll probably rebuild the Yong Heng this summer.
 
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There is a product called Scale-Tec that is for swimming pools that is great for keeping the buildup from happening. It can even git rid of it altogether if its not to bad. A small amount, and I mean a very small amount in the cooling water would do the trick. That bottle would last forever considering its intended use with large bodies of water. Now I am not sure what kind of effects it would have on aluminum but I know that it will not harm the metal plates within a pool salt cell. Being that I am so curious I think I have some around the house somewhere. I may soak some aluminum stock in a jar of it cut to a high concentration. Like a 1:1 ratio. This is far more then you would ever use. I did do a bit of looking around on the net to see what I could find as far as how it reacts with aluminum but so far came up with nothing. If it works this would cut the need for antifreeze. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Ph level of you water can have various effects on metal. Keeping that Ph up can and most likely cause buildup without some sort of additive and if its to low the acidity will eat at the metal over time, but there will be reduced mineral buildup if at all depending on how low the Ph is. Just a thought.
 
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Destilled water is just water, without anything else ergo cero electric conductivity. Tap water has minerals and conductivity.

Destilled water has neutral ph but since it has no minerals, it is ph unstable and and in normal conditions absorb CO2 from the air ( due the h-oh relation and o-c-o), and with that it becomes acidic (carbonic acid), acidic water is not good for any metal. Easy fix, 1 spoon of baking soda for every gallon of destilled water.
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Hi edosan. I really like your thinking on this. I just want to use distilled water (not filtered water because that probably has minerals in it) to cool my Yong Heng compressor. I don't want to use any unhealthy chemicals that I might have to put my hand in or dispose of properly (so no waterwetter or anti-freeze or other similar stuff). By adding just enough baking soda to distilled water to get the pH level of the water to a neutral value of 7 and monitoring the pH level with an inexpensive digital pH level meter (and adding either more distilled water or baking soda as required to keep it at 7), that gives me lots of cooling options that won't leave mineral deposits in the compressor and also won't leech metal from the compressor. Excellent! I can make ice cubes using this clean pH-balanced water and just dump them directly into my bucket of cooling water without contaminating it with minerals from tap water. Because distilled water and baking soda are both inexpensive to buy and available anywhere, I could use two extra large containers of this and put the water pump in one container and run the output warm water line from the compressor into the second container. That way the warm water from the compressor would not be warming up the water that the water pump is in. That alone would really help keep the compressor head cool even without ice cubes. Again, I really like your thinking. It's simple and easy to verify the pH balance with an inexpensive pH level meter. I can dump out this water anywhere without contaminating anything. Thanks edosan in Chile from grungy in Boise, Idaho.

grungy
 
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I used distilled water for the 1 year & 3/4, then I read on this forum a couple months ago to NOT use it so I just replaced it with well filtered tap water which I have in there now. One thing I probably do differently from most is when I'm done using my YH I blow/drain the water out of the cooling jacket. Also read about doing that on this forum & thought I'd give it a try. I'll see if/when I have to tear it down if it's made a difference. I BABY the hell out of that thing. Served me well so far.
 
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I am not an authority on compressor coolant. But I have wondered if a reason for distilled water is because of it's boiling point is lower than water with minerals or sodium. As an example when we add salt to water the boiling point raises. So it can actually get hotter or carry more heat. I do know heat kills these compressors. Is this a reason? I don't know just wondering.
 
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The problem with distilled water is that it's pure water with no contaminants, and water is one of the best solvents in the world. "Solvent" means things efficiently dissolve into it, i.e. whatever kind of metal piping your coolant system is made of, you are giving it the best opportunity to dissolve and corrode into the water.

You want water that is basically close to its carrying capacity, but not so close that it deposits items into the plumbing.
 
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As stated earlier, in the discussion, distilled water will eventually remove material from your aluminum parts.
Plain water cools better than coolant although I have used a 20% solution of coolant to 80% water without any temperature rise noticed.
Plain tap water with Water Wetter is what I ran in my YH when I lived in Portland where the tap water was really pure.
I will be using filtered water with Water Wetter now that I have moved to Salt Lake as the water here is full of minerals.
Here is a bit of Yong Heng Info for you.

Yong Heng post link

https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/a-dedicated-yong-heng-subforum/#post-1127767
 
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