It has been verified in trials on many plants that advanced control systems make the glass melting process more consistent & stable. The benefits are known to most glass producers. At present, when glass production needs to consist of excellent quality at high yield & low energy usage, it is almost impossible to control the production manually. Therefore, a group of advanced control techniques was developed for automatic control. One of those commonly used is Model (based) Predictive Control (MPC). Correct use of MPC results in process stabilisation, increase glass quality & energy savings. Glass Service has developed a software package, Expert System ES-III entirely for the control of the glass production process. It utilises all the advantages of MPC, plus a combination of of Fuzzy control & Neutral Networks. Some of these advanced techniques are described in this paper.
