A compressed fluid (also called a subcooled fluid or subcooled liquid) is a fluid under mechanical and or thermodynamic conditions that force it to be a liquid. It is a liquid at a temperature lower than the saturation temperature at a given pressure. In a plot that compares absolute pressure and specific volume (commonly called a P-v diagram), of a real gas, a compressed fluid is to the left of the liquid-vapor phase boundary; that is, it will be to the left of the vapor dome.
Conditions that cause a fluid to be compressed include:
- Specific volume less than the specific volume of a saturated liquid
- Fluid temperature below the saturation temperature
- Pressure above the saturation pressure
- Enthalpy smaller than the enthalpy of a saturated liquid
The term compressed liquid emphasizes that the pressure is greater than the saturation pressure for the given temperature. Compressed liquid properties are relatively independent of pressure. As such, it is usually acceptable to treat a compressed liquid as a saturated liquid at the given temperature.
Famous quotes containing the words compressed and/or fluid:
“The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe.... A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)