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Superheated steam was widely used in main line steam locomotives. Saturated steam has three main disadvantages in a steam engine: it contains small droplets of water which have to be periodically drained from the cylinders; being precisely at the boiling point of water for the boiler pressure in use, it inevitably condenses to some extent in the steam pipes and cylinders outside the boiler ...
The temperature will remain constant while it is at constant pressure underneath the saturation dome (boiling water stays at a constant of 212F) until it reaches the saturated vapor line. This line is where the mixture has converted completely to vapor. Further heating of the saturated vapor will result in a superheated vapor state.
Steam engines use water vapor to push pistons or turbines, and that movement creates work. The quantitatively described steam quality (steam dryness) is the proportion of saturated steam in a saturated water/steam mixture. In other words, a steam quality of 0 indicates 100% liquid, while a steam quality of 1 (or 100%) indicates 100% steam.
When steam has reached this equilibrium point, it is referred to as saturated steam. Superheated steam or live steam is steam at a temperature higher than its boiling point for the pressure, which only occurs when all liquid water has evaporated or has been removed from the system.
Superheated water is stable because of overpressure that raises the boiling point, or by heating it in a sealed vessel with a headspace, where the liquid water is in equilibrium with vapour at the saturated vapor pressure.
Below that temperature, a water vapor bubble will shrink and vanish. Superheating is an exception to this simple rule; a liquid is sometimes observed not to boil even though its vapor pressure does exceed the ambient pressure. The cause is an additional force, the surface tension, which suppresses the growth of bubbles. [4]
If the fluid is of dry-type, the isentropic expansion necessarily ends in the superheated (also called dry) steam zone. If the working fluid is of isentropic-type, after an isentropic expansion process the fluid stays in saturated vapour state. The quality of vapour is a key factor in choosing steam turbine or expander for heat engines. See ...
The resulting superheated vapor returns to the compressor inlet at point 1 to complete the thermodynamic cycle. The above discussion is based on the ideal vapor-compression refrigeration cycle which does not take into account real world items like frictional pressure drop in the system, slight internal irreversibility during the compression of ...