Removal Of The Foam During Glass Melting

At the end of the batch reaction, melts are formed and the released gases create a vast amount of bubbles which eventually build up a foam layer called the "reaction foam." It provides good conditions for a mass transfer between the gas phase and the melt. The foam creation in the melting area, for example, in the production of brown glass (formation of the amber chromophors) is useful, but the build up of foam layers in the later process stages caused by, for example, sulphide-sulphate reactions in the refining stage, is undesirable. In this article, the author describes experiments to remove the reaction foam from the glass melt process.