Saturation is an important, yet often misunderstood concept in the cryogenic industry. A basic understanding of the term “saturation” is necessary to harness and exploit the benefits of using cryogenic liquids in our specific industries and end-use applications.
In the cryogenic realm, the word ‘saturation’ is a thermodynamic term defining the condition of a liquid whose temperature and pressure are such that any increase in temperature, without a corresponding increase in pressure, causes it to boil and turn to vapor. Alternately, any decrease in pressure, without a corresponding decrease in temperature, also causes the liquid to boil.
In laymen’s terms, a cryogenic liquid (at a given pressure) becomes ‘saturated’ with all the heat it can hold if the addition of anymore heat immediately causes the liquid to begin to boil. In turn, if the pressure in the tank is lowered, by even a fraction, the liquid will also begin to boil. Imagine water slowly dripping into a sponge. The sponge becomes saturated when one more drop of water is added to the sponge, causing one drop to drip from the bottom of the sponge. Similarly, a cryogen becomes saturated with heat, at a given pressure, when the addition of even one more BTU of heat causes the liquid to boil and change phase into vapor.
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