This paper deals with adiabatic evaporation of water into an air steam mixture and pure superheated steam. The focus is made on the inversion temperature, which means that the rate of liquid evaporation into superheated steam becomes equal to the rate of evaporation into dry air. A simple analytical solution for the inversion temperature was derived. The analytical and numerical methods were applied for analysis of different factors (vapor quantity, flow rate, flow regime) on the value of inversion temperature. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.