Our range of application experience could help you to increase productivity and lower costs. All of our solutions in the glass industry are flexible and scalable to suit your process exactly.
Glass manufacture requires a high level of accuracy and reliability in the control of the furnace to achieve consistent glass quality, to avoid energy losses and to keep emissions within legislated boundaries. Reliability is particularly important at critical stages in the process such as the Furnace Reversal. Eurotherm’s T2550 PAC is designed with integral redundancy and is synchronised to a real time clock to ensure that this process can be managed safely and efficiently.
High availability with dual redundant processors
World renown accuracy of control
Continuous, precise glass level control
Cross-limiting lead/lag combustion control
Fuel flow/ratio control
Oxygen trim
Fuel switch over control
Molten glass is a conductor of electricity. Passing high currents through the glass produces direct heating in the resistance presented by the glass. This heating is beneficial as it heats the ‘colder’ bottom glass in the furnace. This heated bottom glass rises towards the top and has a stirring effect which helps with melting and heat transfer. Boosting is often used to meet periodic fluctuations in demand or to support the pull rate of a furnace at the end of its operating life. Boosting may also help to reduce NOx emissions.
For electrical power control and monitoring in fibre glass, float glass, containers and insulation applications, Eurotherm supplies the complete systems including the electrical cabinets, power controllers and necessary transformers.
Environment protection with electro-static filters to control particle emissions
Controlled convection currents to promote homogeneity
The bath is the forming part in a flat glass production process where it is taken from the furnace spout at 1100°C and leaves the bath at 600°C when it is solid.
While in the bath the glass travels through heating, fire polishing and cooling zones. Modern flat glass systems require precise temperature control for these multiple zones. Eurotherm’s control systems provide power control with multi-parameter influence.
Glass enters the annealing lehr at 600°C, at which it can support its own weight but still has many internal stresses. Annealing lehrs have several temperature control zones through which the glass is slowly cooled. These must be properly monitored and controlled for consistency and quality of the glass. This cooling process is critical for the cutability and maximum yield of finished glass.
Multi-zone temperature control
Easy monitoring with local and central HMI solutions
Heat-cool
Speed control
Setpoint changes and control stability to 0.5°C in a range of 0-2000°C
Glass fibre manufacture requires a high level of accuracy and reliability to achieve a consistent quality in the fibre produced.
Eurotherm’s bushing temperature control application has been specifically designed to control temperature cycling in glass fibre manufacture and has been shown to bring:
Increased efficiency
Improved recovery time
Increased availability and productivity
Setpoint depression and ramping - allowing control of the temperature profile during a production cycle
‘Cold bushing’ protection preventing thermal shock to the bushing in the event of operational or mechanical failure
Better than 1°C resolution
Operation with one or two thermocouples - efficient implementation in complex control systems requiring programmed start-up of a heat sensitive process from stand-by condition
Throughout the glass industry electrical motors are used in raw material transport, in exhaust gas handling, in glass forming, in annealing, in cutting and many more applications. Speed, torque and position are critical process parameters in obtaining quality products and should be controlled with high accuracy and reliability.
For speed and motion control Eurotherm supplies complete systems including; motors AC DC or servo drives and electrical cabinets. Eurotherm is particularly well known for its expertise in synchronizing speed and torque in multiple motor applications such as top roll control in a tin bath, or squeezing roll and unwind control in the rolled wired glass process.
Open or closed loop vector control
Wind/unwind control
Speed or torque synchronisation
Top rail control
Squeezing roll control
Conveyor control
Cooling fan control
Windscreens are formed by feeding flat sheets of glass through a tunnel furnace. Each sheet is carried by a very precise mould.
The temperature rise will soften the glass and gravity lets the glass take the form of the mould. The tunnel furnace has a temperature controlled pre-heating zone and an electrical power controlled forming zone. The thermal energy from metallic resistor elements or from medium wave infra-red elements is transferred to the screen in a combination of air-heating and infrared emission. The forming zone has always been divided in hundreds of sub-zones. With the car industry demanding more and more tightly banded tolerances and introducing more complicated forms and shapes, such as top roofs, the number of sub-zones is increasing rapidly.
Complete Eurotherm temperature control, power control and supervisory systems for windscreen forming are in operation world-wide.
Accurate multi-zone temporature control
Accurate open or closed loop power control
High packing density of power controllers to reduce cabinet and floor space
Advanced single cycling firing for infra-red elements, eliminating DC components
Power controller setpoint transfer and monitoring by digital communication, reducing the I/O requirements of the control system
Feed through control
In protecting our habitat the glass industry is making major contributions with the reduction of waste emissions to air, land and water. Monitoring of emissions is the starting point of emission reduction.
Eurotherm has over 40 years of experience in providing process and environmental monitoring systems.
Continuous NOx, SO 2 , Chlorides, Fluorides etc. monitoring
Filter pollution monitoring and automatic filter cleaning control
Tamper proof ready data logging
More and more life science industry companies are forcing their suppliers to adhere to Good Manufacturing Practices. A requirement for GMP production facilities is to make use of GAMP4 validated control and monitoring systems.
With its vast experience in the life science industry, Eurotherm is extremely well fitted to assist the glass industry with complex implementation of systems that can be validated in accordance with GAMP4.
Process modeling and simulation is becoming more and more practiced in process development activities or advanced furnace and feeder control. Modeling and simulation requires vast amounts of process data. Process control systems are the main data source and should therefore have an easy to implement and use interface with modeling and simulation systems.
Eurotherm Control and Monitoring Systems are known for their ease of implemention and use with OPC and ODBC interfaces.
OPC Servers with tag browse facilities
ODBC interfaces
Data collection in relational databases