Briquetting of recycled glass fines for energy and CO2 reduction in the glass industry

Completed

Not Energy Related
Energy Efficiency(Industry)

Applied Research and Development
Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (General Engineering and Mineral & Mining Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Chemical Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr PA Bingham
Faculty of Arts Computing Eng and Sci
Sheffield Hallam University

Standard

EPSRC

01 October 2016

30 September 2017

12 months

£96,454

Energy

East Midlands

Energy : Energy

Dr PA Bingham, Faculty of Arts Computing Eng and Sci, Sheffield Hallam University

The global glass manufacturing sector uses 140 - 220 Terawatt-hours of energy and emits 50-60 million tonnes of CO2 peryear. Manufacturing inefficiencies are such that, without intervention and increased product demand, global CO2emissions from glass making are forecast to increase by 20% by 2019. In the UK alone the glass industry produces over 3million tonnes of glass per year, using 4.5 Terawatt-hours of energy (1.4 Megawatt-hour per tonne of glass melted), andemits 2 million tonnes of CO2. The energy required for melting glass in a furnace accounts for 75% of the energyconsumption. Melting furnaces typically have 50-60% efficiency, however, the introduction of recycled glass (cullet)significantly reduces glass melting energy requirements and CO2 emissions. The availability of quality cullet is an industrywidechallenge - 20% is rejected every year and sent to landfill.We are proposing a feasibility study for a novel briquetting process that will turn rejected cullet (fines) into valuable wastematerial re-introduced into glass manufacture. The proposed technology has potential to (i) reduce the glass industry's CO2emissions by up to 8%; (ii) Secure the long term UK & global supply of cullet and (iii) reduce the industry's energy costs by4-8%. This application is for a lab based project utilising a test briquetting line, with laboratory scale glass melting and testing equipment. The project feasibility steps will be as follows: (1) exploration of the materials and binders required toachieve optimum speed and efficiency of glass raw materials melting in the furnace; (2) determining the physical, chemicaland dimensional requirements of the briquettes for manufacturing and processing purposes, and how the briquetting lineneeds to be designed to accommodate these; (3) lab scale glass melting trials to determine the effect of the briquettes inthe furnace; (4) characterisation and analysis of the resulting samples to understand the impact of the consolidated culletand binding materials on the quality of glass produced vis-a-vis energy consumption; (5) energy and cost savings analysis to determine the environmental and cost implications of each briquette permutation; and (6) Dissemination of findings

23/12/16