Although radiation heat transfer is the dominant mode of heat transfer, especially in hot top glass furnaces, its interaction with the glass bath has not been fully investigated. Rather, except some recent studies, it is common practice to approximate the radiation field as the diffusion process and to combine with the diffusion term of the energy equation using effective thermal conductivity. Considering some of the well known limitations of the effective conductivity concept in heat transfer in molten glass, the purpose of this study is to report on the numerical methodology performed to couple the raidative field to the energy equation. Accordingly, the radiation transfer equation (RTE) has been approximated by the Spherical Harmonics Method (P-1).
