Boiling of Water - continued

Note that as soon as water absorbs 970 BTUs of heat, the water is completely converted into steam. In essence, there is no water left, therefore the steam is referred to as “dry steam”.

However, even if a slight amount of heat is removed from the vapor at this stage, some of it will condense back into water. Steam, which contains some water, is known is “wet steam.”

In a practical sense it is almost impossible to create dry steam with saturated vapor, because due to one reason or another some loss of heat takes place, resulting in condensation of some of the vapor back into water. In a later discussion we will provide an answer to this problem.