Steam Expansion Calculator

Isentropic Isentropic expansion to a lower pressure

Formula & Engineering Notes

Ideal (isentropic) expansion to P2:

s2 = s1,   Δh = h1 − h2(P2, s1)

The inlet entropy is fixed from (P1, T1); the outlet state is read at P2 at that same entropy. Δh is the maximum (reversible) energy release; a real expansion makes entropy and releases less.

All steam properties are interpolated from the shared IAPWS-IF97 steam-table datasets — see the full steam tables and the Steam Property Calculator.

This is the turbine calculation stripped to its physics, with no efficiency or flow — just "if I drop this steam from here to there ideally, what happens and how much energy is on the table?" Constant entropy is the assumption: it's the best case, the yardstick everything real gets measured against.

Notice the steam usually gets wetter as it expands — that's the saturation dome doing its thing. If you need the actual, irreversible result (warmer, higher entropy, less work), apply an efficiency, which is exactly what the turbine-power tool does.