Chapter 6 :

Glass Industry

Mrs.Eman Al Futaisi
Glass Industry

1
 What is Glass?
 Glass is a manufactured material formed when a mixture of sand, soda,
and lime is heated to a high temperature and assumes a molten, or liquid,
state.

Chemistry
Common Chemical Glass
Chemical Name
Name Formula Component
Sand Silica or Silicon SiO2 SiO2
Dioxide
Soda Ash Sodium Carbonate Na2CO3 Na2O
Limestone Calcium Carbonate CaCO3 CaO
Glass Manufacturing
Commercially produced glass can be classified as soda-
lime glass, since it constitutes 77 percent of total glass
production.

The manufacture of such glass is carried out in four

phases:
(1) preparation of raw material,
(2) melting in a furnace,
(3) forming and
(4) finishing.

See diagram for typical glass manufacturing, next slide

4
Glass production
involves two main methods –
The float glass process, which produces sheet glass, and
The glassblowing which produces bottles and other containers.

Glass container production

Modern glass container factories are three-part operations:
1 batch house : handles the raw materials

2hot end : handles the manufacture proper: in which the molten glass is
formed into glass products, beginning when the batch is fed into the furnace
at a slow, controlled rate. The furnaces are natural gas- or fuel oil-fired, and
operate at temperatures up to 1,575°C. then, to the annealing ovens, and
forming machines;

3- Cold end
The role of the cold end is to inspect the containers for defects,
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package the containers for shipment and label the containers.
Annealing
As glass cools it shrinks and solidifies. Uneven cooling causes
weak glass due to stress. Even cooling is achieved by annealing.
An annealing oven (known in the industry as a Lehr)

The glass cools to approximately 600 oC by the time it

actually enters the annealing lehr. Inside the lehr, the glass
undergoes a controlled cooling process, depending on the
glass thickness, over a 20 – 6000 minute period

6
 Float Glass

In 1952 Alistair Pilkington invented the float glass

process. The float glass process is the most common
method of flat glass production in the world.

This process involves melting recycled glass, silica

sand, lime, potash and soda in a furnace and
floating it onto a large bed of molten tin. This mass
slowly solidifies over the molten tin as it enters the
annealing oven where it travels along rollers under
a controlled cooling process.

From this point the glass emerges in one continuous

ribbon where it is then cut and further processed to
customer's needs.
 Float Glass Process1/4
 Batching of raw materials

The main components of Soda Lime glass:

Silica sand (73%),
Calcium oxide (9%),
Soda (13%) and
Magnesium (4%),
All are weighed and mixed into batches
to which recycled glass (cullet) is
added.
 Float Glass Process2/4
 Melting of raw materials in the furnace

The batched raw materials pass from a

mixing silo to a five-chambered
furnace
where they become molten at a temperature
of approximately 1500°C. Every operation is
carefully monitored.

 Drawing the molten glass onto the tin

bath

The molten glass is "floated" onto a bath of

molten tin at a temperature of about 1000°C.
It forms a ribbon with a working width of
3210mm which is normally between 3 and
25mm thick. The glass which is highly
viscous and the tin which is very fluid do
Float Glass Process3/4
 Cooling the molten glass in the
annealing lehr

 On leaving the bath of molten tin, the

glass - now at a temperature of
600°C
- has cooled down sufficiently to pass
to an annealing chamber called a lehr.
 The glass is now hard enough to
pass over rollers and is annealed,
which modifies the internal stresses
enabling it to be cut and worked in a
predictable way and ensuring flatness
of the glass.
 As both surfaces are fire
finished, they need no grinding or
polishing.
 Float Glass Process4/4
 Quality checks, automatic
cutting, storage
 After cooling, the glass undergoes
rigorous quality checks and is washed. It
is then cut into sheets up to 6000mm x
3210mm which are in turn stacked and
stored ready for transport.
 The entire production process from the
batching of raw materials to cutting
and stocking is fully automatic
controlled.
 Glass Recycling
 The used glass containers which you recycle at curb-side or take
to your local recycling station are easily recycled into new
containers at the glass factory.
 Glass companies depend upon local communities and various glass
recyclers, usually located near our manufacturing facilities, to
supply quality used glass, known as cullet, for their factories.

 Already separated by color, the cullet is placed into a hopper and

fed onto a belt. The belt carries the cullet through a powerful
magnet to remove bottle tops and other metals. It then passes
through picking stations to remove contaminants such as ceramic,
Pyrex, and other items that cannot be removed mechanically. The
final step in processing cullet is to crush the cullet into finer glass
particles which will then be added to the Raw Materials as they are
fed into the glass furnace.