Plume Rise from a Stack Based on the Volkov Formula

Abstract

Plume rise from most sources is an important factor in determining ground-level concentration of air pollutants. Various attempts have been done to compute plume rise from stationary sources. Volkov (1979) proposed a formula for calculation of plume dimensions (height and length) from a stack, while most of the well-known plume rise equations can only compute plume rise or plume height. Both plume height and plume length should be determined in some cases, for example in study of stack and cooling tower plume mergence, plume behavior (lofting, fanning, coning, looping, trapping and fumigation) etc. Because there are little studies in the world regarding the accuracy of the Volkov equation, the aim of the present work is to investigate the validity of the Volkov formula based on 5 statistical tests including the relative error, mean square error, root mean square error, coefficient of determination and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient. The results revealed that (1) the Volkov equation better predicts plume rise at the distance of 60 m than 30 m from a typical stack, (2) considering the value of 0.5 instead of 0.4 or 0.65 for n in the Volkov formula will lead to more accurate results and (3) plume dispersion pattern was categorized as lofting. Overall, the Volkov equation can be an acceptable method to study of plume rise; nevertheless more studies must be conducted in the future with regard to the accuracy of the Volkov formula.

Keywords

• plume rise
• stack
• Volkov equation