Steam, odourless, invisible gas consisting of vaporized water. It is usually interspersed with minute droplets of water, which gives it a white, cloudy appearance. In nature, steam is produced by the heating of underground water by volcanic processes and is emitted from hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, and certain types of volcanoes. Steam also can be generated on a large scale by technological systems, as, for example, those employing fossil-fuel-burning boilers and nuclear reactors.

Steam power constitutes an important power source for industrial society. Water is heated to steam in power plants, and the pressurized steam drives turbines that produce electrical current. The thermal energy of steam is thus converted to mechanical energy, which in turn is converted into electricity. The steam used to drive turbogenerators furnishes most of the world’s electric power. Steam is also widely employed in such industrial processes as the manufacture of steel, aluminum, copper, and nickel; the production of chemicals; and the refining of petroleum. In the home, steam has long been used for cooking and heating.

The stages that occur during the transformation of liquid water to its vapour (steam) are shown in the figure, in which A–E depict a cylindrical vessel containing a fixed quantity of water subject to the constant pressure exerted by a weighted (W) movable piston. A′–E′ are corresponding points on a graph showing, for a range of pressures and volumes, whether a specific mass of water is entirely liquid, entirely vapour, or a mixture of the two phases. A and A′ represent this system under conditions of pressure, volume, and temperature such that the water is entirely in the subcooled liquid state; that is, the temperature is below the boiling point of water at the prevailing pressure. The addition of heat causes the water to expand slightly and the temperature to rise until the water reaches its boiling point; at this stage, represented by B and B′, the water is said to be in the saturatedliquid state. If more heat is added, boiling begins: the liquid starts to vaporize (turn into steam), forcing the piston upward more rapidly than before, as illustrated in C.

Steam is useful in power generation because of the unusual properties of water. The manifold hydrogen bonds among water molecules mean that water has a high boiling point and a high latent heat of vaporization compared with other liquids; that is, it takes considerable heat to turn liquid water into steam, which is available when the steam is condensed. The boiling point and the heat of vaporization both depend on ambient pressure. At standard atmospheric pressure of 101 kilopascals (14.7 pounds per square inch), water boils at 100 °C (212 °F). At higher or lower pressures, more or less molecular energy, respectively, is required to allow water molecules to escape from the liquid to the gaseous state. Correspondingly, the boiling point becomes lower or higher. The heat of vaporization, defined as the amount of energy needed to evaporate a unit mass of liquid (in engineering practice, a unit weight), also varies with pressure. At standard atmospheric pressure it is 2,260 kilojoules per kg (972 BTU [British thermal units] per pound).

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