Glass Melting Technology: A Technical and Economic ... - OSTI

3.C. Advanced Oxy-Fuel Fired Front-End
Owens Corning (Steve Mighton)
in collaboration with Osram-Sylvania, Inc., BOC, Combustion Tec/Eclipse
The U.S. glass industry, working with its supply industry, has proactively taken measures
to improve its energy efficiency. The implementation of oxy-fuel fired furnaces and a
host of new generation burners have resulted in much improved furnace energy efficiency
and productivity. The improvement in furnace energy efficiency has resulted in a
redistributed energy usage in the glass manufacturing process. With furnaces operating
on oxygen firing, the front-end system, in many cases, has become the largest energy user
in the entire glass production process.
The glass industry has been widely recognized as one of the most energy intensive
manufacturing industries in the United States. According to the Glass Industry
Technology Roadmap published by the Glass Manufacturing Industry Council (GMIC) [1] ,
the U.S. glass industry consumed over 250 trillion Btu of process energy in 1994.
Approximately 80% of this energy was in the form of natural gas. The total purchased
cost of energy represented over $1.7 billion to the industry in 2000, making it one of the
largest costs in the manufacturing of glass products. In addition, the fluctuation in energy
prices, particularly natural gas, has a significant impact on the business end of
glassmaking.
In the past decade, energy improvement efforts have been focused primarily on the
melting end of the process. Although efforts have been made in improving the glass
quality in the front-end, little has been done to significantly improve its energy
efficiency. In some manufacturing processes, the energy usage in front-end systems
represents close to 60% of the total process natural gas consumption, making it the
biggest target for significant improvement in energy use and savings.
A conventional front-end system typically uses an air/gas firing system. The air and gas
are mixed and then passed through a system of pipes to a large number of burners,
typically 100 to 4000 burners. The burners are air-gas mixture burners. Due to safety
concern, the gas/air mixture is not preheated resulting in poor energy efficiency. In
addition, because of the large number of burners, a network of piping and control systems
are required, representing a big capital investment to the industry.
Summary of Program
The focus of the program is to develop and demonstrate an advanced oxy-fuel fired frontend
system that will significantly reduce natural gas consumption in the overall glass
manufacturing process. The proposed technology is expected to reduce front-end energy
usage by at least 70%. The development of the technology will ensure that it can be
implemented on a current production system or be systematically integrated into the
development of a new generation front-end systems. The proposed program will: (1)
develop burner systems that can be integrated into an operating front-end system; (2)
develop and test a firing system that will reliably meet the needs for front-end system
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