Steam calorimeters are commonly used in process industries, power plants and other industries to determine the quality of steam. Steam quality is a very critical parameter in steam applications as the performance of steam processes depends on it. Conventionally, separating or throttling or combined separating and throttling calorimeters are being used for this purpose. An electrical calorimeter is a concept not well covered in literature, though it has wide range of application and scope with accuracy and this may offset the limitations of the conventionally used calorimeters. It is found that the proposed concept can be applied conveniently to find the dryness fraction and can be validated experimentally. In the present experimental work, therefore, electrical energy is used to find dryness fraction of steam. The design of the system is based on fundamental principles of thermodynamics. Mainly, steady flow energy equation has been applied to derive the desired results. As per the requirements, specifications of various components like steam generator, super heater, etc., have been decided. In the process, electrical energy is used to make dry saturate from the wet steam in a controlled manner, and steam parameters are recorded along with the heat supplied to the wet steam. The key feature of the system is easiness of use without compromising the accuracy. It is also found that this system can be used for a wide range of the dryness fraction unlike conventional methods, which give results in a narrow range.

Steam calorimeters are used for measurement of steam quality also known as dryness fraction, which is the mass of dry steam contained in total mass of steam (dry plus wet) (Nag, 2003). Steam calorimeters are commonly used in process industries, power plants, etc., for determining the quality of steam coming from the boiler. When boilers were initially introduced for running steam turbines, the quality of steam was to be checked to prevent corrosion of turbine blades due to moisture and related problems. In textile, chemical and leather industries, where wet steam is desired for maintaining the quality of product, steam calorimeters are used to determine and subsequently maintain the quality of steam supplied. Various steam calorimeters have been developed so far to measure steam quality as accurately as possible. But most of the currently used calorimeters have some limitations.

In the present work, a complete study of steam properties has been done in order to explore new ways to determine dryness fraction of steam more accurately. The study revealed that the principle of steady flow can be applied to measure the quality of steam and thus conceptualizes the initial framework. The equipment was then fabricated to implement the conceived ideas and tested in laboratory. The results were found to be accurate and free from any limitation as compared to other calorimeters.

An extensive literature survey has been carried out to find the various ways of determining dryness fraction of steam under the following context: steam calorimeter, quality of steam, dryness fraction measurement and related terms. Literature review reveals that commonly, separating calorimeter, throttling calorimeter and combined separating and throttling calorimeters are used in practice depending upon the individual requirements. But the application of electrical energy to find the dryness fraction of steam is not well covered and thus not reported as such. A brief account of commonly used steam calorimeters in industries (Mathur and Mehta, 2001; and Nagaraj and Venkatesh, 2005) is as follows:

Mechanical Engineering Journal, Electrical Calorimeter, Steam Calorimeters, Electrical Energy, Power Plants, Steam Engineering, Throttling Process, Thermodynamic Processes, Conventional Methods, Thermocouples, Throttling Calorimeter, Steam Generators.