Author Description

Remote sensing of cooling tower and factory stack plumes may provide unique information on the constituents of the plume. Potential information of the power generated by the plant or the chemical composition of the factory products may be gathered from thermal emission and absorption in the infrared band, or from scattering of light in the visible band. A new model for generating synthetic images of plumes has been developed using DIRSIG, a radiometrically based ray-tracing code. Existing models that determine the characteristics of the plume (constituents, concentration, particulate sizing, and temperature) are used to construct the plume in DIRSIG.