On a still day in harbour, will the colder exhaust plume sink to ship-deck level and be drawn into the air intakes?
In a properly designed exhaust gas stack system the plume will not sink to ship-deck. Moreover, the plume from our device cannot reach a temperature that is less than ambient. Since the heat flow of all systems onboard ship are relative to the ambient water and air temperatures, it is not possible to produce exhaust which is lower in temperature than ambient conditions. Model results show that a plume, which is saturated in water vapor and only 10C above ambient temperature, will rise to a height that is 60% of the plume rise from an untreated exhaust exiting the stack at 400C. This is due to both the basic physics of plume behavior, and to the considerable energy content of the water vapor in the plume.
