What is the Air Composed of That is Produced from Boiling Water?

So it's still pure water, the molecules have just somehow magically expanded to an enormous size...So if you were in a room filled with nothing but steam, would you drown or suffocate?

So it's still pure water,

Ever hear of a still?

So if you were in a room filled with nothing but steam, would you drown or suffocate?

cooked like a lobster.

length of time depends on the temperature of course.

Molecule don't expand it stays the same size, Its the density that changes.

The water could be boiled at near room temperature at reduced atmospheric pressure....so heat would not be a factor....

Heat is always a factor, its depends on your environment.

You can boil water at 113 degrees F, @ about 29" of vacuum.

Inversely, Thats why you can keep water in a liquid state at higher temperatures, under pressure. This is where you can get super heated water.........or any other liquid depending on it's thermal properties.

on a side note, temperature is only a one way street. It travels hot to cold.

So the hot steam was mixed with vacuum produced steam, to achieve a temp of normal ambient and 1 atm....The question is, would you drown or suffocate?

is this a thought experiment?

I think so....

One would be scalded to death at 100degC.

If the temperature were ambient at 1 atmosphere, then there would be other substances present, like nitrogen, oxygen and a load of other bits to make moist air.

No Air--- Hard to survive in a vacuum, for me anyway.

The heat wouldn't kill you, but the reduced pressure would make you explode.

In that case the pressure would be so low that water in the body would boil too. Perish the thought.

Water expands 1,700 times when it turns to steam.

super heating water and having it flash is a.................experience

Remember, do not heat water in a microwave, it will kill you.

I was going to mentioned that, but I think we covered that quite throughly a few weeks back.

Within reason. I regularly warm my cold coffee up to a drinkable temperature, but that is not the same as bringing it up to the boil.

Thank you. It is sad that it has taken so long for us to realize this. A recent study showed that of the people dying in the US today (actual data from the year 2011), 99.996% had consumed water that had been heated in a microwave.

How stupid we have been! Amana even (boldly) reminded us of the danger inherent in these units by calling theirs a Radarange. RADAR means RAdio Detection And Ranging and was developed by the military to help aging generals locate their radios (tho god only knows why they would want to find their a radios -- they sounded really crummy in those days). Back then, we said "senile" or "nutty" or "loony" to describe the condition now known as psoriasis, but we certainly should not have wanted to have one of these radar units in out kitchens, any more than we would want a pile of used Depends in the kitchen. No one wants to be reminded of how icky old age can be.

I almost posted this as off topic. But I think that in important threads like this, where we are discussing esoteric concepts like the difference between water and steam, it is important to get the word out, and I wanted to amplify what you said, by adding whatever I just said, the content of which I seem to have forgotten.

UnBLEVEable!

how fitting.

One would scald to death first!

we can dive into this a little deeper.

We use a Wiped Film Evaporator to fractionize liquid in its separate components.....molecule by molecule.

I had wrote a thesis on this....its somewhere, I see if I can pull some graphics up.

So if the water was pure H2O, and you had to breath just the steam, could your lungs remove/strip the oxygen enough to survive? would you then exhale the hydrogen?

You'd be permanently dead, from drowning or suffocation, whichever you prefer.

Or from low pressure or high temperature, otherwise the steam would condense.

or from the heat.... depending on the conditions to to produce the steam.

I don't like the sounds of where these questions are heading, better call suicide hotline........just to be safe.

Let's not intervene until the last minute, I want to see how it's done.

Yes, that would also solve the OP's question.

carry on.

OK, time to hit the shower...

Does steam effect an iphone? What about if I put it in the microwave to dry it out?

What you are seeing here is water vapour and air henc the ability to breathe.

Just so long as it's not a Nokia. Bad idea.

Well, yes. Until the circuits all fail due to the generation of unwanted electrical activity from their response to the microwave energy. So it wouldn't be usable afterwards. It's OK if one wanted to use it afterwards as a door stop or a fishing weight, perhaps.

Just don't drink any microwaved water....

I've been drinking tea made from microwaved water for many years and I am still here. What is the problem? Hang on - my leg's just fallen off.

my leg's just fallen off.

Oh we missed that one.

http://www.samaritans.org/

Now you're being silly!

Uh...this is CR4. What were you expecting?

No - as already mentioned, due to the lowering on density, there would not be enough oxygen to survive, and basic biology tells you that you would NOT exhale hydrogen, you would exhale carbon dioxide for as long as you were able to breath in oxygen.

Well, there go my plans for a hydrogen-powered pennyfarthing (though I suppose one could always FART).

Not quite. Even after the oxygen supply runs out, the body would switch to anaerobic metabolism and continue to produce CO2 to be exhaled. The endpoint is when the brain stops functioning because of the lack of oxygen, which, admittedly, happens fairly shortly afterwards.

No. One would scald to death first. Biological systems do not survive well above 60degC!

Electrolysis does not take place in the lungs of any creature on this planet.

No, the lung provides an extensive membrane surface across which oxygen can pass into the blood, CO2 can come out and other gases can establish an equilibrium. There is no provision of energy for splitting water molecules.
Drowning is simply one form of suffocation.

Holy crap are you serious?? I heat water in the microwave all the time. Usually for my NeoCitron when I get "The Man Cold". I don't heat it twice but now...I'm curious!

If you look at some food recipes, you see instructions for cooking a little longer in high altitudes, at the lower ambient pressure the water cooks off at a lower temperature.

The water doesn't have to be boiling or even warm. There is a form of wind chill that occurs on inanimate objects, washing on the line for one, air with low relative humidity pulls water molecules from the sheet and since energy is required for the phase change, cools the sheet. We used to keep our butter and such in covered dishes that were placed in larger dishes with some water in them. this was covered with a cloth which absorbed some of the water. Individual molecules jumped into the air cooling the dish. This sounds complicated but the dish combos were made for this.

Even better is when the wind blows over an iced up object, say a lamppost, the air sucks a water molecule from the ice, cooling it even more because it is a double phase change.

The process you are talking about for cooling has been around a few years, called a pot in pot.

it is dihydrogen monoxide vapor, very dangerous!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SImhkapRuIs

water has a few parts per million of dissolved air, and the air in water is not in the same ratio as in air. Ice cold water is the maximum amount of air solubility. As you heat the water, the air gets less and less soluble and at the boiling point there is close to zero air in the water.

Bubbles form and rise to the surface and the amount of oxygen varies as there is a degree of fractionation. You would have to follow the solubility curves of O2 and N2 from zero to 100C to find the divergence. Cold water has about 10-12 ppm of air = not much

I wondered when somebody would make that point, as it seems to me the gist of OP's question.

At a given partial pressure O2 is more soluble than N2. In the atmosphere partial pressure of O2 ~ 0.2 bar, and N2 0.8 bar.

So N2 partial pressure is about 4 x higher, but at eg 10°C, water saturated in contact with the atmosphere has O2 = 11.25 mg/l, N2 = 18.75 mg/l, N2 only ~1.7 x higher. Gas boiled out of water is therefore 11.25/(11.25 + 18.75) = 37.5% w/w O2, while in the atmosphere it's 23%.

But it's not true that "As you heat the water, the air gets less and less soluble and at the boiling point there is close to zero air in the water." At a given partial pressure, solubility at 100°C is still about 1/2 the value at 10°. The reason boiling removes all dissolved gases is that the in the bubbles of steam the water vapour has partial pressure 1 atm, and the gas partial pressure close to zero.

Forgot to add in #58 - cold water at saturation contains 10-12 mg/l of oxygen, plus 18-20 mg/l nitrogen.

Doing a quick google gives:

Here are some gases that are soluble in water

1. Argon
2. Methane
3. Ethylene
4. Ethane
5. Carbon-mono-oxide
6. Carbon-di-oxide
7. Chlorine Gas
8. Hydrogen Gas
9. Hydrogen Sulfide
10. Helium
11. Nitrogen
12. Ammonia
13. Sulfur Oxide
14. Oxygen
    

_{<deletion edit>}

I am not sure if I have the correct answer but I will try.

The air (mol wt = 29) in the room tend to have stratification, with lighter H2O vapours (mol wt = 18) rising up towards the ceiling. Therefore, condensation occur at the ceiling of a space instead of at the floor where the cold air is.

Heat stratification and losses. The heated air rises. It's capacity to hold moisture is relatively higher than the cold air at floor level. The heated air loses some of its heat to the environment. When there is insufficient additional heat and the risen air cools below its dewpoint temperature some water vapor condenses.

The saturation point of gases in water is inversely related to the temperature. As you raise the temperature of the water these gases are liberated. Most common gases are oxygen and carbon dioxide. Refer to the charts provided.

Fill a deep pan with water about 3/4 full and put it on the stove. When it just starts boiling, notice how the bubbles start at the bottom, quickly grow and just as quickly disappear before reaching the water surface. The water vapour expands quickly but neither does it waste any time condensing when the conditions are right.

You can breathe pure water vapour but you will suffocate as a result - assuming you don't die first from the low vapour pressure if at room-temperature or scald your lungs if steam under pressure. There is no free oxygen in pure water vapour.

Water does not need to break down into H and O to become gas. It is water vapor which is a gas in it's own right. Also many gases are soluble in water and most water contains them. The bubbles are a mixture of the above.

For some reason? my computer doesn't always show any other responses and it appears there are none until I respond and find out that many others have already well stated the same answer.

refresh your screen before posting...it's not automatic here...

I don't agree with the suffocation theory when breathing in water vapor (steam). My mom's old school remedy for clearing a stuffy nose. Boil water in a pot, put your head over it, cover with a towel and breathe. Works like a charm, been doing it for years, and I'm still around.

Steamy air is good for stuffy noses, yes, but breathing pure steam will first scald you and then suffocate you.

Okay. Makes sense. Now how can you breathe in pure steam with absolutely no oxygen in the mix? I'm thinking you can't because air is everywhere but...I'm sure someone will chime in with a suggestion.

Anyone? Anyone?...Bueller?...Bueller?

It's not pure steam. It is a water vapour, which is NOT a gas, air mix. While towels are good for holding the warm vapour in they are rather porous and not at all airtight (you didn't see NASA using towels to seal their shuttles). The vapour would also tend to be soaked up by the towel. In reality all you have is warn high humidity air and some water vapour under the towel

The bubbles are steam, then they break the surface and flash to become water vapor.

Yes I know it's not pure steam. My use of the word "steam" was incorrect. Steam is not visible and neither is water vapor. I was refering to the white stuff you see above a boiling kettle (call it what you like).

Hence my question: In what real world scenario would it be possible to breathe in pure steam (no oxygen in the mix)? As soon as "steam" is exposed to air it cools and becomes water droplets so...where can it remain in "steam" state long enough for you to breathe it in?

....why am asking this question?...I dunno. I'm still trying to figure out why this thread interested me in the first place.

Wait a minute, if you have water in a sealed container, and run a vacuum pump the water will boil...Now if you did that long enough to evacuate all the air that was in the container, then shut off the vacuum pump and heated the water to a boil, until the pressure was at 1 atm...allowed it to cool to ambient...what would be the gas composition in the container? Can anyone answer this question?

Hydrogen and oxygen but still combined to be water in both gaseous and liquid state?

So it would still be pure H2O..? Invisible water?

Assuming that all of the air has been removed, then more suction applied, you would have a gas of H₂O molecules. However, in the nature of things, some would condense into water droplets and drop back into the pot while other molecules jumped out to take their place.

So you can find numerous examples of people suffocating from steam, it's funny that I had never heard of it before...

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/MadhyaPradesh/Case-against-hotel-mgmt-as-woman-guest-dies-of-suffocation/Article1-530724.aspx

Suffocation from steam...

No. I don't see how anybody would find themselves in that condition. It would be a lot of work to set that up.

Well it's something to be aware of, if you go in, or are building a steam room, that it must be adequately ventilated, and you must not stay longer than maybe 10 min or so...Word to the wise, you can suffocate in an unventilated steam room...

It's also worth getting the word out that air tight rooms are deadly, even when lethal dihydrogen oxide is not introduced. Air is (dangerously) only 21% O2. Imagine the horror of being locked in an airtight room, with only a Reader's Digest to read.

Gradually the O2 level goes down, and the CO2 level goes up. In the midst of your worrying whether or not the greenhouse effect applies to windowless rooms, you pass out.

Wouldn't you rather go out with a bang, than to fall into a sleep from which you never awake?

Whatever bubbles are seen that is not air but that is steam.

USS Iwo Jima in 1990

They were cooked to death in hot steam.