How come nitrogen can stay so cold in all temperatures? I guess it’s not cold when compressed inside the bottle, rather a reaction when turning to gas? But where does the energy from the “room temperature” go?
In: Chemistry
It’s the energy of phase change that keeps liquid nitrogen cold.
The point is, it is slowly turning to gas (evaporating). This evaporation takes energy so all the heat transferred from the environment to the nitrogen is used. The gas-liquid mixture can’t get above the boiling temperature until all the liquid is evaporated (for given pressure).
It is exactly the same reason that keeps boiling water at 100% centigrade no matter how much you heat it. 100C is the boiling point of water, just like nitrogen boiling point is -196C.
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