"Or ya can take yer tea kettle, rip out some copper water line and curl it around the baseball bat ya keep and coil it to "distill" dirty water to clean by boiling it and letting the steam condense in the copper coil attached to the kettle."
It's my understanding that some chemicals will transfer with the steam and remain in the resulting water. True False?
If there are volatile compounds (say, petroleum distillates) with a boiling point less than that of water in the mix, that is true. Though if you think that's an issue, you could get rid of most of them by bringing the water to an open boil for a little while, and then connecting up the condensing coil after most of the volatiles had boiled off into the air.