Visible plumes above wet cooling towers are of great concern due to the associated aesthetic and environmental impacts. The parallel path wet/dry cooling tower is one of the most commonly used approaches for plume abatement, however, the associated capital cost is usually high due to the addition of the dry coils. Recently, passive technologies, which make use of free solar energy or the latent heat of the hot, moist air rising through the cooling tower fill, have been proposed to minimize or abate the visible plume and/or conserve water. In this review, we contrast established versus novel technologies and give a perspective on the relative merits and demerits of each. Of course, no assessment of the severity of a visible plume can be made without first understanding its atmospheric trajectory. To this end, numerous attempts, being either theoretical or numerical or experimental, have been proposed to predict plume behavior in atmospheres that are either uniform versus density-stratified or still versus windy (whether highly-turbulent or not). Problems of particular interests are plume rise/deflection, condensation and drift deposition, the latter consideration being a concern of public health due to the possible transport and spread of Legionella bacteria.

由于与之相关的美学和环境影响，湿式冷却塔上方的可见羽流非常令人关注。平行路径湿式/干式冷却塔是减少烟羽的最常用方法之一，但是，由于增加了干式盘管，相关的投资成本通常很高。近来，已经提出了利用自由太阳能或通过冷却塔填充物上升的湿热空气的潜热的无源技术，以最小化或减轻可见烟羽和/或节约水。在这篇综述中，我们将既有技术与新颖技术进行了对比，并对每种技术的相对优缺点进行了展望。当然，如果不首先了解可见烟流的大气轨迹，就无法评估可见烟流的严重性。为此，进行了无数次尝试，不论是理论上的，数值上的还是实验上的，已经提出来预测在均匀对密度分层或仍然对大风（无论是否高度湍流）的大气中的羽流行为。特别令人关注的问题是羽状物的上升/偏转，凝结和漂移沉积，由于军团菌的可能传播和传播，后一种考虑是公共卫生问题。