GMIC begins $3 million electric glass melting project

The Glass Manufacturing Industry Council (GMIC) has started its US Government funded project to decarbonise glass production through electric melting.

Last year, GMIC was awarded a three-year, $3 million grant from the US Department of Energy to research electric melting in glass manufacturing.

The project aims to demonstrate melting processes capable of reducing Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions by 85+% for commercial glass production.

Project partners are CelSian (lead investigator), Roman Manufacturing, Toledo Engineering Co (TECO), and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

The focus will be on overcoming three barriers which have hindered the adoption of all-electric glass furnaces:

• Producing dark/reduced coloured glasses, such as amber.

• Improving the quality of clear glass.

• Increasing furnace lifetimes.

Launched in Q4 2024, the project has accomplished the following:

• Establishing the project laboratory and modelling capabilities.

• Setting up the cold-top melting furnace.

• Testing the pelletizing set up.

• Completing the CFD grid of the cold-top furnace.

• Establishing the future workflow plans.

The furnace was installed at the University of Toledo, Ohio, USA (see above).

In addition, the team established base line recipes for the amber and flint tests.

These recipes were chosen to represent industrial glass melt formulas and be consistent across project members conducting tests in the CelSian laboratory, the PNNL laboratory, and through CFD modelling.

Industrial-grade raw materials and post-consumer flint cullet were obtained from GMIC member Gallo Glass; internal flint cullet was also acquired from a separate glass plant.

During the quarter, five successful cold-top experiments were run on the cold-top furnace:

• Container batch containing 30% post-consumer flint cullet at 2.0 ton/m²/day.

• Container batch containing 30% internal flint cullet at 2.0 ton/m²/day.

• Container batch containing 30% internal flint cullet at 1.75 ton/m²/day.

• Container batch containing 70% internal flint cullet at 2.0 ton/m²/day.

• 100% internal flint cullet at 2.0 ton/m²/day.

GMIC will continue providing quarterly updates to its members as the research progresses.