Alglass~(TM) Heat recovery: an advanced oxy-combustion technology with heat recovery for glass furnaces makes sustainable performances

摘要

Increasing furnace efficiency and reducing NO_x & CO_2 emissions are today's glassmakers first concerns for being competitive in their market. Innovative solutions are investigated at all levels. They include pretreating the batch to melt glass more efficiently, improving combustion control to reduce NOx and switching to natural gas for lower carbon emissions. For glass production and particularly for flat glass domain, Air Liquide and AGC Glass Europe have developed recently a highly innovative technology Alglass~(tm) Heat recovery to recover most of the heat of the flue gases, rising up four challenges in one time: Float furnace conversion to oxy-combustion, staged oxy-combustion burner technology, oxygen preheating and natural gas preheating. This paper presents the results of the industrial prototype and the various approaches and methodologies that have been launched to make this technical partnership a success. This technology enables reducing operations costs (OPEX) with a profitable investment cost(CAPEX).