Professional Documents
Culture Documents
January, 2003
July, 2003
mv
Water vapor density v dV
dV
ma = mass of moist air
ma
Air density a mv = mass of water vapor
dV
Atmospheric gases:
Nitrogen – 78.1%
Oxygen – 20.9%
Other gases ~ 1%
http://www.bambooweb.com/articles/e/a/Earth's_atmosphere.html
Specific Humidity, qv
• Specific humidity
measures the mass of
v
water vapor per unit
qv
a
mass of moist air
• It is dimensionless
Vapor pressure, e
• Vapor pressure, e, is the
pressure that water vapor
exerts on a surface
• Air pressure, p, is the
total pressure that air
makes on a surface
• Ideal gas law relates
pressure to absolute
temperature T, Rv is the e v RvT
gas constant for water
vapor
• 0.622 is ratio of mol. wt. e
of water vapor to avg mol. qv 0.622
wt. of dry air p
Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures
John Dalton studied the effect of gases in a
mixture. He observed that the Total Pressure of
a gas mixture was the sum of the Partial
Pressure of each gas.
P total = P1 + P2 + P3 + .......Pn
17.27T
es 611exp
237.3 T
1 kPa = 1000 Pa
Relative humidity, Rh
es
e
Rh Relative humidity measures the percent
of the saturation water content of the air
es that it currently holds (0 – 100%)
Dewpoint Temperature, Td
Td T
July