Glass Technology Services (Glass Technology Services) has successfully completed a study on behalf of the Carbon Trust investigating the reformulation of the composition of container glass. The project was an industrial demonstration that glass batch can be changed to reduce melting temperature to provide energy savings thus, CO2 reduction. Glass Technology Services demonstrated that the introduction of fluxes, such as spodumene, have been shown to reduce energy usage by 1.2% & reduce crown temperature by 30 deg C. Multiple batch changes were shown to give an 82 deg C reduction in melting temperature, which brings 4.8% energy saving. The project was supported by the majority of the UK glass container industry, & around 20,000/t glass was melted during 5 industrial trials. The project showed it is possible to reformulate container glass composition to give a reduction in melting temperature, while still retaining the desirable properties of the glass.
