Sisecam’s Burcin Gul wins Furnace Solutions best paper award

Sisecam’s Burcin Gul has won the award for the Furnace Solutions conference best paper at Thursday’s event.

Mrs Gul won the Michael Garvey award for her paper, Improving Furnace Performance by Design and Operation.

Her paper investigated the role of design parameters in combustion space on energy consumption and better management of the temperature profile in glass container furnaces.

Furnace Solutions conference Chairman Nigel Longshaw said Mrs Gul’s enthusiasm for the subject gave her paper an added extra.

He told Glass International: "It was a difficult decision because there were some very strong papers. Her enthusiasm and the detail she was able to give in 30 minutes knocked people out. She was so knowledgeable about her subject. She is a young engineer and was talking in a second language but had the audience transfixed by her presentation.”

The two-day Furnace Solutions event comprised of a training day and a conference day and took place at Lucideon, Stoke-on-Trent, UK.

It is organised by the UK’s Society of Glass Technology. Approximately 80 people from 10 countries attended each day. Delegates travelled from Europe, the United States, Israel and Turkey to attend.

The training day comprised of five presentations and had the theme: The Batch: guilty as charged.

The day culminated in the Mellor Memorial lecture which celebrated the work of renowned ceramicist Joseph William Mellor 150 years after his birth. The lecture was presented by Trevor Wilson of DSF Refractories and was titled A short life sentence: Batch Carry-over attack on Refractories.

The conference day comprised of eight presentations from EME, VRMT, Fives Stein, Libbey, the UK Health and Safety Executive, Hotwork and Sefpro as well as Sisecam.

Mr Longshaw said: “It was very good event and I am pleased. There were really high quality papers on both days and very good speakers to the extent that during the questions and answer sessions there was a lot of two way conversations around the room, particularly during the training day. 

“One of the great things about Furnace Solutions is the opportunity to debate relevant topics and those conversations rolled out to the breakout periods.”