Encirc and Saint-Gobain projects awarded funding through the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund

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Flat glass building

Two members of British Glass have been awarded almost a quarter of the total amount available from Phase one of the Government’s Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF).

Encirc and Saint-Gobain Glass have been awarded £4m funding in total for projects at their Elton and Eggborough sites which will see the former introduce end-to-end process control and the latter improve their glass furnace efficiency.

After being awarded nearly £1.5m in funding, Saint-Gobain will upgrade their existing flat glass production furnace, which is over 21 years old, to improve the plant’s efficiency while also reducing the energy consumption, emissions, and maintenance costs.

For the project Saint-Gobain Glass has designed an entirely new furnace and production line component replacements using the latest technological advancements in this area.

Currently the furnace improvements are set to be completed in 2021 and will see an annual reduction in gas consumption of 75,243 MWh and a lifetime reduction of 276,836 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile at Encirc, the support from the IETF fund will go towards the deployment of end-to-end process control through the implementation of control systems linking processes across the two container glass furnaces and the 14 forming lines at the Elton site.

Undertaking the project will see the furnaces optimised to run at minimum energy whilst maintaining glass quality, increased packed-to-melt efficiency through reduced defects/rejects in forming processes and an estimated total annual CO2 savings of more than 15kT a year.

The new control systems will also enable the implementation of future decarbonisation opportunities such as hydrogen fuels and the light-weighting of containers.

Following the first round of winners, there will be further calls for funding from the IETF over the course of the year with the next closing date 14 July.

For more information on the winners of the first round of funding, visit the IETF Phase 1: Summer 2020 competition winners page and for more information on the next round of calls for funding visit the Innovation Funding Page on gov.uk.