This paper mainly concerned about the dynamic response model of wet cooling coils that is developed by the Laplace transform method. The theoretic equations are firstly established based on the theory of energy conservation. Then, the transfer functions on the transient responses of wet cooling coils have been deduced using the method of Laplace transform. The transfer functions reveal the dynamic relationships between the inlet variables and the outlet ones of the cooling coils. Partial-fraction method and Newton-Raphson method are both used in the inversion of the transfer functions from the s-domain to T-domain. To make the dynamic model of wet cooling coils more adaptive, RBFNN method is employed to determine the coefficients of heat and mass transfer. Experiments have been done and manifested that the coefficients of heat and mass transfer by RBFNN will be of great value to the validity of the transient response model of wet cooling coils in this study. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.