Water tank studies of the interactions between buoyant plumes emitted into a crossflow

This paper presents an experimental study of the effects of plume interactions on plume rise. The work was carried out in a towing tank using both quantitative flow visualisation and point concentration measurement methods. Plume trajectories from a single stack agreed closely with predictions from a standard analytical plume rise model. Interactions between in-line pairs of plumes increased their rise by up to 40% in the cases studied. Concentration maps through plume cross-sections showed the development of a twin vortex system with the highest concentrations near the vortex centres. These results were used to prove that the image analysis system provided properties of the cross-stream integrated plume.