Glassmaking furnace employing heat pipes for preheating glass batch

摘要

An apparatus and method are provided for recovering waste heat from the exhaust of a combustion-heated glass melting furnace and transferred by heat pipes to an enclosure in which incoming glass batch materials are preheated prior to being fed to the furnace for melting. The batch materials are efficiently preheated with the waste heat without permitting direct contact between the exhaust effluent and the batch materials so that the entrainment and discharge of batch dust with the effluent is avoided.