This paper deals with proportional stabilization and closed-loop step response identification of the fractional order counterparts of the unstable first order plus dead time (FOPDT) processes. At first, the necessary and sufficient condition for stabilizability of such processes by proportional controllers is found. Then, by assuming that a process of this kind has been stabilized by a proportional controller and the step response data of the closed-loop system is available, an algorithm is proposed for estimating the order and the parameters of an unstable fractional order model by using the mentioned data. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.