What was the volume of cyclohexane that escaped?
Answer The Court’s favoured hypothesis required an escape from the 28″ nozzles for 30 seconds (from when eye-witnesses were first alerted until the main explosion) and for 40-60 tonnes of cyclohexane to escape before the ignition. This is reasonably consistent with our calculated ~1.8 tonnes/second combined discharge from the 28″ nozzles. The 8″ line hypothesis, by identifying the first noise as the burst from the 8″ line elbow, used up 10-15 seconds before the hypothesised explosion under the fin-fan coolers brought down the 20″ line. This halves the time for a major escape from the 28″ nozzles (reducing this to 20-30 tonnes) but also differs in that there was also an escape from the 8″ line (perhaps 2-3 tonnes) and the fin-fan coolers and, in this alternative scenario, a proportion of this cyclohexane was consumed on the outside of the burning cloud throughout this period. A recent (2003) paper, “A Re-analysis of the Atmospheric and Ionospheric Effects of the Flixborough Explosion” r
