The process of rapid phase transition from highly superheated liquid to vap
or is frequently so fast and violent that it is called explosive boiling. T
he paper uses the kinetic theory of evaporation to study growth of an inter
nal vapor bubble produced by homogeneous nucleation within a highly superhe
ated liquid droplet boiling explosively in a hot medium. Evaporation/conden
sation coefficient is estimated by comparing the predictions of the theory
with available experimental data. We show that the value of the evaporation
coefficient can be very low for high reduced temperatures (0.06 for butane
at 378 K), in agreement with recent molecular dynamic simulations. (C) 200
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