Observed and predicted cooling tower plume rise at the John E. Amos Power Plant, West Virginia

There is much current interest in cooling tower plume rise because of its importance in determining the environmental impact of cooling towers at planned power plants and industrial facilities. Some of the possible environmental problems related to heat and water emissions from cooling towers are drift deposition, ground level fog, cloud formation, and precipitation enhancement. An important factor in all of these problems is the calculation of the plume trajectory, which is often complicated by the presence of multiple sources and water phase changes in the plume. The latent heat does not strongly influence plume rise if there is no cloud present at the top of the plume. A one dimensional plume and cloud growth model was developed to study these effects. In this paper, the predictions of the model are compared with observations of cooling tower plume rise at the John E. Amos, W. Va. fossil-fuel power plant