In recent years, oxy-fuel combustion has become widely embraced for the many benefits it brings to glass melting operations. Air Products has facilitated the acceptance of this change to the glassmaker's process with a sustained investment in people, R&D and activities that continuously brings new and innovative products to the industry. This paper provides a review of a full-furnace conversion accomplished at furnace rebuild in the fiberglass industry. Since the glass company's primary motivation to convert their melting operation to oxy-fuel was fuel savings, most of the focus will be about the fuel efficiency improvement. The review will also include a discussion of burner features that act to maximise combustion efficiency by increasing the amount of energy transferred directly from the flame to the batch materials and to the molten glass. A comparison of operational data before and after conversion from air-fuel to oxy-fuel combustion as well as operator observations is included.
