ABSTRACT

Reduction of ground-level concentrations from a point source can be accomplished by elevation of the point of emission above the ground level. The chimney has long been used to accomplish the task of getting the smoke from fires out of the house and above the inhabitants’ heads. Unfortunately, meteorological conditions have not cooperated fully, and, thus, the smoke from chimneys does not always rise up and out of the immediate neighborhood of the emission. To overcome this difficulty for large sources where steam is produced, for example, power plants and space heating boiler facilities, taller and taller stacks have been built. These tall stacks do not remove the pollution from the atmosphere, but they do aid in reducing groundlevel concentrations to a value low enough, so that harmful or damaging effects are minimized in the vicinity of the source.