Quickly find steam saturated temperature when the pressure is known by using double square root method
Probably you sit in a meeting and you need to quickly estimate the temperature of saturated steam using a calculator instead of finding it in a steam table such as the IAPWS-IF97 formula. You could actually do that pretty accurately by doubling the square root of that steam pressure in barA as shown below:
Tsat = [(P^0.5)^0.5]x100
where;
P = Saturated Steam Pressure (barA)
Tsat= Saturated Steam Temperature (degC)
Note: the pressure is in abs not gauge.
Now let’s check how acceptable this method is vs IF97.
Sat. Steam Pres. (barA) |
Temp w/ IF97 (degC) |
Temp w/ double sqroot (degC) |
Error % |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 99.606 | 100.000 | 0.40 |
2 | 120.212 | 118.921 | 1.07 |
4 | 143.613 | 141.421 | 1.53 |
6 | 158.832 | 156.508 | 1.46 |
8 | 170.414 | 168.179 | 1.31 |
10 | 179.886 | 177.828 | 1.14 |
20 | 212.385 | 211.474 | 0.43 |
40 | 250.358 | 251.487 | 0.45 |
60 | 275.586 | 278.316 | 0.99 |
80 | 295.009 | 299.070 | 1.38 |
100 | 310.999 | 316.228 | 1.68 |
The error is less than 2%! Pretty reliable.
Bonus reference: Typical saturated steam condition from the plant utility.
Steam Type | Pressure (barG) | Pressure (barA) |
---|---|---|
Low Pressure (sat) Steam | 5.5 | 4.5 |
Desuperheated Medium Pressure Steam | 17 | 16 |
Desuperheated High Pressure Steam | 47 | 46 |