Experiments On Buoyant Plume Dispersion In A Laboratory Convection Tank

Plume dispersion in the convective boundary layer (CBL) is investigated experimentally in a laboratory convection tank. The focusis on highly-buoyant plumes that loft near or become trapped in the CBL capping inversion and resistdownward mixing. Such plumes are defined by dimensionless buoyancy fluxes F*≳ 0.1, where F* = Fb/(U w*2 zi), Fb is the stack buoyancy flux,U is the mean wind speed, w* is the convective velocity scale, and zi is the CBL depth. The aim is to obtain statistically-reliable mean (C) and root-mean-square (rms, σc) concentration fields as a function of F* and the dimensionless distance X = w*x/(U zi), where x is the distance downstream of the source.