This paper explains an intelligent furnace design as a refined system with more compact regenerators and less burners and smaller batch chargers coming from the end firing concept, than coming from the (older) cross firing concept. End Fired furnace is the most prominent furnace used in glass industry which offers high thermal efficiency and lower investment costs. However, one disadvantage about the end-fired furnace is that it is more difficult to adjust the flame and so to create a hotspot by the top heating of the glass. Therefore some amount of electric boosting makes control of the glass melting easier, and at the same time it provides the furnace with a higher degree of operating flexibility. Interestingly, daily regulation of fossil fuel firing and electric energy supply to stabilize temperatures is no longer in the hands of the operator, but fully taken over automatically by the ES IIITM Model Based Predictive (MPC) controller, which provides consistent process control, 24 hours per day, focused to operate the entire glass production process in the most efficient way. The ES IIITM system watches the furnace the entire day and collects all relevant furnace operating data to update the predictions of the future trend lines. Thus, an intelligent system has more sensors and more control variables.
