Oscillatory thermal instability and the Bhopal disaster

A stability analysis is presented of the hydrolysis of methyl isocyanate (MIC) using a homogeneous flow reactor paradigm. The results simulate the thermal runaway that occurred inside the storage tank of MIC at the Bhopal Union Carbide plant in December 1984. The stability properties of the model indicate that the thermal runaway may have been due to a large amplitude, hard thermal oscillation initiated at a subcritical Hopf bifurcation. This type of thermal misbehavior cannot be predicted using conventional thermal diagrams, and may be typical of liquid thermoreactive systems.
Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Process Safety and Environmental Protection 08 July 2010. A belated submission from work that should have been written up and published years ago