I am mainly using this to make distilled water and maybe at some point will try something else. For my use it does work well. As I have never distilled even water before... I am not an expert at using this system. But, it seems to be of very good quality. I have found that I can distill about a gallon of distilled water in about 3 hours or so... it is not fast to do this process! And, it takes a lot of ice to keep the cooling tower condensing well. I pre-freeze 1/2 gallon blocks (at least 6 of these) prior to distilling to make 1 gallon. I am still playing/testing with this... is this still worth the cost... yes. Just know (if you never done this kind of thing) it does take time to get anything (even distilled water) out of it.