Everything is a conductor if the voltage is high enough. laugh

But I'm puzzled as to why an electrode boiler would be used with DI water, as it would not only be terribly inefficient (less ions mean less current and slower heating), but would also contaminate the DI water with ions sputtered from the hot electrodes. Was it an electrode boiler or an electrodeionization machine which doesn't boil the water, but instead uses electrodes separated from the DI stream by special membranes to create an electrical charge field to draw ions through those special membranes?