Cooling tower plume abatement: combining turbulent plume theory and psychrometrics

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The visible plumes generated by cooling towers pose dangers to the air and ground transportation industries and are often viewed unfavorably by nearby residents who associate condensing steam with a more noxious melange of chemical effluents. Plume abatement strategies have been developed that mix hot moist air with lesser volumes of hot dry air, however, these designs tend to be expensive to install and operate and are therefore underutilized in practice. So as to improve upon existing models for plume abatement, we propose to combine psychrometrics (the study of the thermodynamics of air-steam mixtures) with turbulent plume theory in identifying, for prescribed operating and atmospheric conditions, optimal mixing ratios. Special attention will be given to ambient stratification and the possibility of an "atmospheric inversion layer" along which effluent discharged from the cooling tower might accumulate. Although our analytical study will leverage existing theories, these will be combined in a novel way. The use of turbulent plume theory is especially significant in this respect: it provides well-validated parameterizations of turbulent mixing that avoid the complications, numerical and otherwise, of resolving a full range of turbulent motions. This project will be completed with guidance from industry experts at International Cooling Tower. It will provide detailed training to a graduate student on topics related to cooling tower design, thermodynamics and environmental fluid dynamics and will include as its major deliverable a computer algorithm that can be applied in future engineering design calculations.