Furnace

Float glass is made from a combination of several ingredients such as sand, soda ash, dolomite, limestone,salt cake, and cullet (recycled glass).
The raw materials are received and stocked in storage areas. From storage areas they are then moved as needed to the silos. The raw materials are then drawn down from the silos for batch weighing and mixing. Cullet, which is crushed glass from edge trim of the cut lites or from broken cut lites, is blended with the mixed batch to make from up from 15% to 30% of each batch. The mixture is then delivered to the melting furnace by belt conveyor.
The batch house consists of, silos, hoppers, conveyors, chutes, dust collectors, and the necessary controls to properly handle the raw materials and mixed batch. The raw materials storage and handling is designed to suit the types of glass which will be produced along with the availability of the raw materials.

The mixed batch is delivered from the batch house to the furnace storage bin (called high rise building), by a belt conveyor system, where it's stored and then feed into the furnace at a controlled rate by the batch charger. As the batch is feed into the furnace melter area it's heated by the natural gas burners to approximately 1600 degrees C. From the melter the molten glass flows through the refiner then through the waist area, where stirrers homogenize the glass, then into the working end where the glass is allowed to cool slowly to the proper temperature for delivery to the float furnace.
The melting furnace consists of refractory bricks and special shapes, support and binding steel, insulation, a fossil fuel firing system, temperature sensors and a computerized process control system. The design of the furnace is carefully made to meet the plant's specific gross daily glass production tonnage goals.
The insulation, special airflow features, and combustion air heating enable the furnace to operate at maximum fuel efficiency with negligible pollutant emissions. The furnace is sized and designed to provide high quality glass with the smallest amount of energy per ton of glass melted.