Absolute humidity is the quantity of water in a particular volume of air. The most common units are grams per cubic meter, although any mass unit and any volume unit could be used. Pounds per cubic foot is common in the U.S., and occasionally even other units mixing the Imperial and metric systems are used.

If all the water in one cubic meter of air were condensed into a container, the container could be weighed to determine absolute humidity. The amount of vapor in that cube of air is the absolute humidity of that cubic meter of air. More technically: the mass of water vapor m_w, per cubic meter of air, V_a .

Absolute humidity ranges from 0 grams per cubic meter in dry air to 30 grams per cubic meter (0.03 ounce per cubic foot) when the vapour is saturated at 30 °C.[1] (See also Absolute Humidity table)

The absolute humidity changes as air pressure changes. This is very inconvenient for chemical engineering calculations, e.g. for dryers, where temperature can vary considerably. As a result, absolute humidity is generally defined in chemical engineering as mass of water vapor per unit mass of dry air, also known as the mass mixing ratio (see below), which is much more rigorous for heat and mass balance calculations. Mass of water per unit volume as in the equation above would then be defined as volumetric humidity. Because of the potential confusion, British Standard BS 1339 (revised 2002) suggests avoiding the term "absolute humidity". Units should always be carefully checked. Most humidity charts are given in g/kg or kg/kg, but any mass units may be used.

The engineering of physical and thermodynamic properties of gas-vapor mixtures is named Psychrometrics.

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