End fired furnaces with regenerative air preheating

Fossil fuel heating principle:

The furnace is always fired by means of one of two burner ports located side by side in the furnace rear wall. Each burner port is equipped with 2 - 4 underport burners.
Flame from the burner port goes through combustion area of the melting end of the furnace, turns back by 1800, and combustion gases leave the furnace through the other burner port, and enter a regenerator chamber packed with regenerator packing made of refractory material. The regenerators can be designed as single pass or double pass chambers.
Refractories of regenerator packing, and regenerator walls are heated up by the passing through combustion gases. Then, in predetermined time, this cycle is reversed, and combustion air then flows through the regenerator packing of the hot chamber. Heat from the refractories is transferred to combustion air that is heated up to 1,350 0C. In the mouth of the burner port, the preheated air is then mixed with fossil fuel in controlled mixing ratio and then it burns with optimum parameters in the combustion space of the melting end of the furnace.
.High temperature combustion process with optimum parameters of flame, and a relatively long residence time of combustion gases in the furnace result in very good heat transfer to raw materials in the furnace.
These types of furnaces therefore reach one of the lowest specific energy consumption among all the fossil fuel fired furnaces.
The furnace output can be further increased by installing electric boosting equipment that is recommended also for the improvement of thermal homogeneity of molten glass in colour glass melting processes.
A bubbler system is usually installed in the area preceding the glass-refining zone. The furnace is usually charged by means of oscillating batch chargers via 1 or 2 doghouses situated immediately at the rear wall.
The melting unit technological process is fully automated and controlled by automatic control system that enables one to control sequential and continuous technological processes.
The control system offers the following standard features: Storing and sorting of historical values measured,complete library of predetermined user screen displays,graphic imaging of measured values in trend screens,printing of user reports and alarm signalling.
The working end of the furnace is designed in accordance with customer’s needs.

Brief technical parameters:

Typical applications: Container glass
Figured glass
Glass type: Soda-lime glass
Melting capacity: 30 – 500 t/24h
Melting area: 20 - 130 m2
Fuel: Natural gas, fuel oil
Specific energy consumption: 850 kcal/kg and more, which depends on the type and colour of molten glass, type of operation,melting capacity, cullet ratio, and the capacity of electric booster heating.