JML Steam Bee???

Saruman

Anyone used one of these things?? according to the ad it will lift that grease from your oven!

ircoha

Interesting name, steam cleaner

http://www.woolworths.co.uk/ww_p2/product/index.jhtml?pid=50711559

shows what I presume is the steam coming out the front of the Bee.

For my money what you can see coming out is actually water vapour [WP].

AFAIK steam is invisible.

If u have an electric kettle and when it is boiling there is a gap of about 15/20mm of clear "air" right at the top of the spout and then the "white mist".
The invisible bit is the steam.

Anyway to answer your question

according to the ad it will lift that grease from your oven

it will soften the grease okay but u will still have to wipe it off with a cloth or something.
In addition u will have a certain amount of water to contend with as the WP condenses further onto the cold surface.

As it is Saturday night perhaps it is timely to explain why a burn from steam is much worse than a burn from hot water.

The answer lies in that well know physics concept of the latent heat of vaporization

The definition of the specific latent heat of vaporization is

'The specific latent heat of vaporization is the amount of heat required to convert unit mass of a liquid into the vapour without a change in temperature."

For water at its normal boiling point of 100 ºC, the latent specific latent heat of vaporization is 2260 kJ.kg-1. This means that to convert 1 kg of water at 100 ºC to 1 kg of steam at 100 ºC, 2260 kJ of heat must be absorbed by the water. Conversely, when 1 kg of steam at 100 ºC condenses to give 1 kg of water at 100 ºC, 2260 kJ of heat will be released to the surroundings.

Note: there is no drop in temp, but the 2260kJ are released, this what causes the severe burns from steam

FranknFurter

lol, thanks for the physics lesson ircoha.

as for Saruman's question though, I had one, it was leaky, messy and made more of a mess than it "cleaned" as all it does it turn the dirt into dirty water. Expect to have to mop up a surprising amount of water!

B

Mellor

Ircoha, you point of steam burns and the latent heat of vapourisation is correct, but I've heard that example before and IMO it has one massive flaw. The fact that is uses equal amounts of each water and steam. KG for KG steam has a much greater energy, I agree 100%, but when you are scalded with water or steam, over the same area, the masses are going to be different because of the big difference in density. One litre of water has more energy than one litre of steam.
A large scale burn from steam will be alot worse, say from a industrial flue. Where there is a very high volume.
But on a domestic scale, I'd rather pass my hand over the lettle than through the pot.
But both will still burn you badly.