Trial incineration of waste from Bhopal gas tragedy begins, air quality normal so far

Implementing the orders of the Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the trial run was initiated on February 27, with unloading of the five different kinds of hazardous waste from five of the 12 containers. The waste was then transferred to a designated storage spot at the private facility, located over an hour’s drive from Indore.
A total of 10 metric tonnes, each, will be incinerated on three dates – February 27, March 4 and March 10.

The second and third trials will be carried out after checking if the first trial has had no adverse effects and the emissions are within prescribed values of ambient air quality standards.

Senior officials of the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board (MPPCB) and Central Pollution Control Board are supervising the incineration process and are following a standard operating procedure, prepared based on the Hazardous Substances Management Rules.

Senior officials of Madhya Pradesh Police, Dhar district administration and senior executives of Re Sustainability Ltd are present at the facility during the trial.

“The process began on February 27 with a blank or dry run of the incinerator. The incinerator has two chambers, the first one has to reach a temperature of 850 degree Celsius and the second one has to reach a maximum temperature of 1,150 degree Celsius. The dry run went on for over 12 hours. At 3 pm on Friday, we began feeding the actual waste into the incinerator,” Shrinivas Dwivedi, regional officer, MPPCB, told The Indian Express.

Dwivedi said while the dry run of the incinerator was going on, a feed of the hazardous waste was prepared by mixing it with lime. This is done to maintain optimum calorific value during incineration. “We prepared 9 kg packets and they are being fed into the incinerator at a rate of 135 kg/hour,” he said.

In the subsequent process, the flue gases produced during the waste burning will be sprayed with a solution of sodium sulphide and a multicyclone will collect dust particles. This trial will go on for the next 72-74 hours and so far, all the pollutants emitted are well within the permissible prescribed range, Dwivedi added.

Dhar Collector Priyank Mishra told Indian Express, “At present, the work is being done following a SoP created by the MPPCB. Ten metric tonnes of waste will be incinerated on three different occasions. The minimum number of containers that were required to be opened to start the trial were five as the different kinds of waste were stored in different containers.”

The waste transported from the Union Carbide factory consists of different categories: 162 MT of excavated contaminated soil; 92 MT of naphthol and carbaryl, also known as Sevin insecticide; 54 MT of semi processed pesticide waste; and 29 MT of residue from the plant’s reactor.

The hazardous waste was transported to Pithampur after the Madhya Pradesh HC had slammed the state government’s “inertia” and ordered immediate clean-up of the Union Carbide factory site and safe disposal of entire toxic waste /material from the area concerned. The waste brought to Pithampur was production linked waste that was dumped on the factory floor and premises and initially bundled and packed away on the plant site in 2005.

A large contingent of police is at the site since the area has seen protests ever since waste was brought to Pithampur in special trucks on January 2.

The Supreme Court had, on February 27, refused to interfere with the order of the MP High Court to transfer and dispose of the waste. The bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice AG Masih had also refused to stay the test process.

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which occurred during the night of December 2-3, 1984, involved a catastrophic leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas from the Union Carbide facility resulting in the deaths of at least 5,479 people and left thousands with severe health repercussions, marking it as one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history.

(With inputs from Anand Mohan, Bhopal)