High-temperature mineral melts are currently produced in tank furnaces, kilns, cupolas, and electric melters. Each of these furnaces offers distinct advantages for various products, but all of them are limited by high capital cost, large size, low throughput, high fuel and operating cost, or high emissions. An advanced melting technology, submerged combustion melting (SCM), has been developed by the GINAS to address many of the limitations of other melting processes. SCM has been licensed by the Institute of Gas Technology in the USA and is being actively developed for a number of commercial applications. Development work has begun to extend SCM from the single commercial application of mineral wool production by air-gas firing to melting of mineral wool, cement kiln dust mixtures, and sodium silicate using air-gas and oxygen-gas firing.
