Union Carbide celebrated their 50 years jubilee of doing business in India in 1984. Often seeing themselves as heroes of the community, providing jobs and financial growth in rural parts of India, they could never have foreseen the turn of events that would cause the people they employed, and many others around the world, to become so hostile towards them. The world calls it “the worst industrial disaster in history” or “the greatest man-made disaster”, but who was responsible for the unbearable circumstances that the people of Bhopal faced? Was it the chemical engineers? And what actions were taken against those responsible, what were the consequences towards them?
As a chemical engineer, you rea responsible for every life working on the plant …show more content…
The engineers who designed the plant did install safety measures. These include valves to stop water or other substances from flowing into the Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) – a main ingredient in producing crop pesticide - which could cause a runaway reaction which ultimately was the cause of the Bhopal Disaster. Other valves to stop MIC from escaping the storage tank were also installed. A vent gas scrub was installed to neutralise the toxic gas. Alarms were set up to warn of any dangers. And finally a flare tower was in place to burn the toxic MIC gas before it left the plant facility and drift towards the nearly 800 000 population of …show more content…
The older the plant, the more rigorous maintenance it needs, this plant was 15 years old. At that time, Indian farmers were suffering from a drought, thus they did not purchase pesticide. This is why the plant had such a large quantity of MIC in storage. Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) and especially that plant became a financial liability. The plant had to cut costs, so they laid off a third of the workforce. They did not produce as much as they used to, so they cut back on maintenance and frequency of safety checks as well, which proves why the flare tower was not fixed after months of being offline. Thus the blame and repercussions shifted away from engineers and towards UCC and UCIL
As a chemical engineer, you rea responsible for every life working on the plant …show more content…
The engineers who designed the plant did install safety measures. These include valves to stop water or other substances from flowing into the Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) – a main ingredient in producing crop pesticide - which could cause a runaway reaction which ultimately was the cause of the Bhopal Disaster. Other valves to stop MIC from escaping the storage tank were also installed. A vent gas scrub was installed to neutralise the toxic gas. Alarms were set up to warn of any dangers. And finally a flare tower was in place to burn the toxic MIC gas before it left the plant facility and drift towards the nearly 800 000 population of …show more content…
The older the plant, the more rigorous maintenance it needs, this plant was 15 years old. At that time, Indian farmers were suffering from a drought, thus they did not purchase pesticide. This is why the plant had such a large quantity of MIC in storage. Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) and especially that plant became a financial liability. The plant had to cut costs, so they laid off a third of the workforce. They did not produce as much as they used to, so they cut back on maintenance and frequency of safety checks as well, which proves why the flare tower was not fixed after months of being offline. Thus the blame and repercussions shifted away from engineers and towards UCC and UCIL