Guardian Glass’s £4 million waste heat recovery system

Guardian Industries’ Glass Group has invested more than £4 million to develop and implement a customised Waste Heat Recovery System (WHRS) at its Goole, UK glass manufacturing plant.

The company embarked on the WHRS project at the start of this year at the East Yorkshire plant.The new system will provide half the electrical energy required to operate Guardian’s full float line, which in turn will reduce its dependency on the grid and effectively reduce its CO2 emissions by 6000 tons per year.

In terms of environmental impact, that’s the equivalent of taking nearly 2200 cars off the road.

Float glass manufacturing requires a large amount of energy. Running a furnace at about 1,600ºC 365 days a year consumes a lot of natural resources. The nature of the float glass process means that heat inevitably escapes the furnace.

Guardian’s new WHRS uses a complex method of capturing waste heat from the furnace without disrupting the delicate convection currents, which continually flow inside the furnace as the batch material is turned to molten glass. This system represents a new approach both for Guardian and for the glass industry as a whole.

“This is another great example of Guardian striving toward operational excellence,” said Pablo Isasmendi, Plant Manager for Guardian Industries UK.

“We constantly look for new ways to innovate and improve the float glass process and this demonstrates to the entire industry that there’s a viable way to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions from the float glass manufacturing process.”

As a result of this investment, Guardian not only will be producing some of the most energy-efficient coated glass products available, it also will reduce its carbon footprint, making Guardian glass the smart choice now and for the future.