Being an extremely energy intensive sector, in the future the glassmaking industry is going to be faced with increasing pressure to lower its pollution (NOx, SOx, acid gases, metals, particulate matter) and greenhouse gases (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere, and to decrease its specific energy consumption. To achieve this goal, many innovative technological solutions are being developed, such as low-NOx burners, staged combustion systems, new waste gases treatment systems capable of unprecedented efficiency and compactness (e.g. with de-NOx catalyst embedded in the filtering system), or new systems for the advanced recovery of flue gases residual energy. The first step in reaching a better energy efficiency and a lower production of NOx, SOx and CO2, however, is to simply exploit at its fullest potential the equipment already installed in each furnace, running it int he most optimized way. To support the glass producers in this task, SSV has developed an experimental approach for the fine tuning of the burners of glass melting furnaces, leading to sizeable emissions reductions of NOx and SOx and to slightly improved specific energy consumption performances and thus, lower CO2 production.
