Edition 73 (January-March, 2024)

Company News
With IG2Pieces, HEGLA offers a system solution that can separate glass from an
IGU, cleanly and without damage.
Separating insulated glass:
Utilising imperfect panes
and end-of-life IGUs
Breakthrough In Glass Recycling With HEGLA’s
Innovative Technology
Revolutionizing recycling, HEGLA automates insulated
glass separation, boosting sustainability and resource
efficiency in building materials.
The amount of glass on buildings
continues to increase: be
it transparent facades and
multiple IGUs on new buildings, or
windows and panes that are replaced
on existing properties at the end of
the product life cycle. For many years,
mixed glass containers were the go-to
variant for glass disposal, but rising
energy costs and society’s growing
awareness of sustainability have
increased the incentive to recycle.
With the IG2Pieces assembly line
technology, HEGLA has developed
a solution that can automatically
separate insulated glass.
At the same time, the company
offers a handling concept that retains
the purity of the raw material and
improves revenues or enables panes to
be reused as such.
Dealing with imperfect panes and
used glass sustainably
“Our development work was based
on the question of how it is possible
to deal with imperfect panes and
used glass in a way that conserves
resources and is efficient at the same
time,” said Heinrich Ostendarp,
Managing Director of HEGLA. To
ensure that the glass panes remain
usable for a range of applications,
the aim was to release the individual
panes from the spacers reliably,
cleanly and without damage, while
maintaining high productivity.
“Thanks to a newly developed
separation method, the automated
process leaves only a minimal amount
of sealing compound on the surface of
the pane,” added Dr Ostendarp.
The measurement of the ISO
dimensions and the insulated glass
structure is fully automated. Once
the glass has been removed from the
laminate, it can be recycled without
any loss of raw material quality.
Just like the panes, the unimpaired
spacers, including the intact
desiccant, are conveyed to a separate
system for disposal or recycling.
Type-specific float glass yields
financial advantages
Separated recycling of the individual
types of glass yields advantages,
compared to mixed containers. When
panes are professionally separated,
this generates added financial value.
The impact on the environment is also
positive: the panes find their way back
to the float tank to close the material
circuit while preserving the quality
of the raw material. Further, one
kilogram of floatglass that is produced
from used glass generates around 0.3
kilogram less CO2, compared to a
classic glass mixture.
78 Glass Bulletin | January - March, 2024