• Challenge: the reliability and the energetic aspects are the main criteria. The challenge of temperature is more or less important according the application.
  • Solution: they are various with low range fans but robust and well designed.
  • References: we have numerous references and a real know how in this business field with Saint-Gobain, Glaverbel, … but also with the EOM working in this field. List of reference on demand.

The plate glass and containers (bottles..) manufacturing requires a high level of energy, as the beginning of the process consist in melting the material made of sand, lime, soda and other special ingredients.

 

The smelting furnace are consequently equipped with burners, back heaters (thermal exchange between the fresh air and hot smokes) exhaust piping to the chimney, usually with a bag filter upstream to retain the dust in the flow. The refractory bricks walls have to be cooled also.

 

Each equipment requires to put in movement the air or the smokes considering the pressure drop generated by this flow circulation. It is the function of the fans requested to generate high pressure as well as important flow, keeping the reliability of all the installation. Indeed, a glass furnace should operate continuously to avoid damage and deterioration to its structure.

At the exit of the furnace, the liquid glass should be shaped:

 

  • For plate glass, it is floating on melting tin bath because of the density difference, to give to it the wished plate shape but also the transparency. Then it is cooled progressively, the glass sheet moves on conveyors through a line called annealing lehr. Here too, the fans are major instrument of the process evacuating progressively the calories by cooling or to control the temperature rising to acceptable level for the structure. They must resist to a temperature up to 550°C.
  • For this containers as bottle, the molten glass is moved by feeders and cut into glass tears (parison) shaped in a matrix belonging to an IS machine. The bottles go through a stress relieve annealing in a lehr arch.

 

The fans ensure the cooling, the air pressurization and the smoke extraction.

Before being exhausted in the atmosphere, the fumes should be cooled and dustless. The exhaust fan is placed downstream of the bag filter or the electrostatic filter (ESP), and should be able to resist to a temperature up to 400°C, extracting at the same time large flows of fumes in the chimney.

Among the transformations on the plate glass after cooling, the quenching used to improve the mechanical characteristic of the glass sheet. In case of glass breakage, the quenched glass will crack into small pieces without sharp edges, called security glass. Here too, the fans ensure the quenching furnace operation and the severe and rapid cooling of the glass to confer it the right characteristics.

 

AirVision owns multiple references in the business glass industry, for each of the process steps described before.