On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 9:58 AM, James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote:
> By the way, this means that if the water in the reactor vessel is under > enough pressure, the water pressure can be very high. This means, in turn, > that if it goes through a pressure drop, it can be completely vaporized -- > indeed superheated steam. > > It would have to be a very high pressure and temperature to completely vaporize it. Vaporization extracts energy which causes cooling, and when enough vaporizes to cool the remaining liquid to the new boiling point, the vaporization stops. For example, if liquid water at 105C under pressure, were released to atmospheric pressure, only about 1% (by mass) would vaporize. That would still be a noisy and impressive spray, because 1% by mass corresponds to more than 90% by volume. Such a wet mist could easily be mistaken for pure steam by an uncritical audience (and of course, has been).
