The validity of currently popular plume rise formulas

The ground-level concentrations of pollutants downwind of a tall chimney decrease as the effective height of the stack increases. The effective height of the stack is the actual height plus the rise of the plume centerline due to momentum and buoyancy of the effluent. Over twenty plume rise formulas have been proposed, but none is Widely accepted due in part to a lack of sufficient plume rise data for testing. In this paper, 711 plume rise observations are used to test the ability of fifteen of the published formulas to predict plume rise. The plume rise data were obtained from stacks whose heat emission rate varied over four orders of magnitude. (author)