Steam Quality

"STEAM QUALITY has been generally defined as the amount of moisture/vapor (or lack thereof) contained within steam produced from some form of boiler. It has long been used as the standard term for the measurement of ""wet or dry"" steam and as a means of measuring enthalpy. Totally dry steam is said to be ""saturated"" steam. It is sometimes defined as the ""dryness faction"". The term in its historical denotation refers to a physical attribute of the steam. That attribute being ""what is the percentage water vapor content of the steam"" as compared to the amount of steam. Dry saturated steam is steam which carries no water vapor with it and is defined as having a quality of 1.00 (100%). Since water vapor is always present at the interface between the water level and the steam in a boiler, some water vapor will always tend to pass through the system with the steam. Hence, a continuing problem. If steam does carry water vapor past the separators it will tend to coalesce as a liquid, and in doing so it also will carry boiler chemicals with it.