Oxy-combustion in glass melting has the advantage to create a reduced amount of flue waste gas compared to aero-combustion and this gives potential benefits of reduced energy consumption and reduced emissions. However, the use of oxygen is expensive and with ever increasing efficiencies of regenerative furnaces the economics of oxy-fuel can be questionable. When oxy-fuel is considered, the favourable technology further improvements in energy efficiency are welcome. Even with the reduced flue amount, still some energy is contained in the flue gas leaving the tanke at the typical temperatures of 1450 deg C. FSL has targeted this as a potential route to increasing overall efficiency of energy usage. FSL has developed an innovative crown design with a heat recover area which encourages optimum heat transfer between the waste gases leaving the combustion chamber and the raw materials entering the furnace at the batch charging position. the HRA can be realised without an increase in size or footprint and without significant increase in Capex and has been proven to increase efficiencies between 6-10% for a large tank (300/tpd). This paper reviews the history of associated technologies, the basis of the heat recover area (HRA)design, how it was derived and finally, presents information from the recent installation made by Fives in Europe.
