Professional Documents
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Bhopal Incident
Report
Chemical Engineering Process Design 4
PQD400S
Lecturer: Ademola Rabiu
Student Name:
Student Number:
Date Submitted:
Loreen Grobbelaar
212236156
24 February 2015
Page 1
Bhopal Disaster
The worlds worst industrial disaster occurred on the night of December 2, 1984, when a chemical
spill on a pesticide plant in central India in the city of Bhopal caused the death of thousands of
people. The chemical company responsible for the spill of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas belonged to
Union Carbide, established in 1934 (Union Carbide, 2014).
Some say water was deliberately added to the MIC in the 40 ton storage tank. As a result of
increasing temperature, pressure in the tank also increased, causing a valve failure and further
caused the MIC gas to leak from a 30m high chimney. This height was not enough to reduce the
effects of the discharge, the leaking MIC gas could have been detoxified if the vent gas scrubber was
not turned off. At the time of the incident, a connecting pipe had been removed from the flare tower
which was designed to burn off leaking gas, for maintenance. The huge cloud of toxic gas drifted
straight into the densely populated city of Bhopal and settled over a half a million people (Edwards,
T. 2014).
prevented if the inventory of MIC was eliminated or reduced by storing the substance in many small
containers rather than in one large container (Edwards, T. 2014).
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Bhopal Disaster
References
1. Chronic Toxicity Summary - Methyl Isocyanate. 2001. [Online]. Available:
http://oehha.ca.gov/air/chronic_rels/pdf/methyliso.pdf [2015, February 20].
2. Smyth, J. 2014. Bhopal Disaster. Greenpeace. [Online]. Available:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/toxics/justice-for-bhopal/ [2015, February 21].
3. Union Carbide Corporation - Bhopal Gas Tragedy. 2014. [Online]. Available:
http://www.bhopal.com/Remediation-of-Bhopal-Plant-Site [2015, February 22].
4. Edwards, T. 2014. The Bhopal Medical Appeal. [Online]. Available: http://bhopal.org/whathappened/ [2015, February 22].
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