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This paper presents a case study of the prediction, potential and control of plume in wet cooling towers from a huge commercial building in Hong Kong based on the weather data available for a particular year. The power input is found to be lower and the coefficient of performance (COP) moderate when all the 10 towers with low speed are in use, while it is found to be reverse when there are five towers, especially, three low and two high-speed towers are used. It is also found that the combined heating and cooling option can be a better approach than that of the heating option alone from the point of view of thermodynamics as well as from the point of view of economics. The COP of the chillers increases from 6.01 to 7.09 when the number of cooling towers increases from five to ten. On the other hand, the power consumption first decreases and then increases which is mainly due to the increment in the consumption of fan power from 270 to 900 kW for both options. The overall power consumption decreases slightly for the combined heating and cooling option, while in the heating option, the overall power consumption increases slightly. However, it is observed that a proper operation of cooling towers is an effective means to control and/or at least reduce the potential of visible plume generated by wet cooling towers at the existing chilling plant design for this particular building. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]