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triffid_hunter t1_j78asm8 wrote

Steam engine boilers have been doing something similar for over a hundred years - boiling occurs when the partial pressure of a liquid exceeds ambient atmospheric pressure, so you can just jack up the pressure to force a hot liquid to not boil, and they kinda do this by themselves by simple thermal expansion in a filled closed volume.

From memory, steam engine boilers commonly operated at something like 300+°C to get sufficient working pressure for efficient operation, and there were numerous boiler explosion disasters before we worked out how to make them strong enough to withstand the insane pressure.

Conversely, if you reduce atmospheric pressure, water will boil at a lower temperature - and in fact there's heaps of videos on youtube where folk chuck a cup of water in a vacuum chamber and make it boil until it freezes from the evaporative temperature loss, and also explains why it's really difficult to make a decent cup of tea or coffee at high altitudes.

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