A Truly Global Resource

With over 1,500 glass manufacturing plants located in every corner of the globe, glass manufacture is omnipresent. Furnaces for flat glass, container glass and glass fiber filaments operate at temperatures of over 1500°C making glass production a significant source of waste heat.

Glass plants demand significant capital investment and operate at an impressive scale, with individual plant output typically measured in tens to hundreds of tons per day. With demanding process constraints, these plants run continuously 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for anywhere from 5 to 12 years between shut-downs.

Energy is a significant cost in the glass sector, accounting for up to 15% of total product cost, with half of all energy being consumed in the melting furnace. With tight margins in a high volume business, efficiency increases can have a meaningful impact on business performance.

In The Process Flow

Process heat is accessible at multiple stages in the glass production process, at furnace flues, and in the product flow during the glass conditioning and forming process.

MTPV’s EBLADE Power Platform provides a low risk, low complexity solution to waste heat recovery in the glass industry.

1. Temperature range from oxy fuel furnace flues is in the ideal range for our first generation product
2. Solid state design results in high uptime for continuous operations
3. Small form factor means easy retrofits into existing production process infrastructure with minimal interruption and no downtime

Environmental Impact

Due to its size/weight to value ratio, and risk of breakage in transit, glass plants tend to be located in close proximity to population centers, with one plant for every 1-2 million people. Chances are good that there is a glass plant near you, so improving efficiency has direct economic and environmental impact.