It also lowers operating costs by using less energy and reduces nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 75% and carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions by 40%.īecause the furnace is a consumable - the process of melting and moving the glass wears away the refractory bricks that line the furnace interior - efforts are being made to increase the brick’s service life. Control of oxygen flow rates are crucial because furnaces that use the latest technology burn nearly pure oxygen instead of air because it helps the natural gas fuel to burn cleaner and hotter, melting glass more efficiently. and oxygen flow rates.” They also maintain a smoother, steadier flow to the fiberization equipment, avoiding air bubbles or other interruptions that could cause discontinuities in fiber formation. measure and manage the precise temperature of the glass as it moves through the furnace as well as the gas. One of the most important advances has been digital control technology. The use of larger furnaces has increased throughput to between 30,000 and 40,000 metric tonnes (66.2 to 88.2 million pounds) per year. Source | OCVĪccording to Scott Northrup, global business development director for AGY (Aiken, S.C.), furnace operation is being improved on several fronts. This direct melt furnace at OCV’s reinforcements plant in Amarillo, Texas processes 30,000 tonnes of molten glass per year via nine burners which operate more efficiently by using oxygen, instead of air, to help the natural gas fuel burn hotter and cleaner. ![]() This process can be broken down into five basic steps: batching, melting, fiberization, coating and drying/packaging. If pure SiO 2 is heated to 1720☌/3128☏ then cooled quickly, crystallization can be prevented and the process yields the amorphous or randomly ordered atomic structure we know as glass.Īlthough continuously refined and improved, today’s glass fiber manufacturers combine this high heat/quick cool strategy with other steps in a process that is basically the same as that developed in the 1930s, albeit on a much larger scale. Glass is produced by altering the temperature and cooldown rates. If SiO 2 is heated above 1200☌/2192☏ then cooled ambiently, it crystallizes and becomes quartz. Quartz, however, is crystalline (rigid, highly ordered atomic structure) and is 99% or more SiO 2. SiO 2 is also the basic element in quartz, a naturally occurring rock. Textile-grade glass fibers are made from silica (SiO 2) sand, which melts at 1720☌/3128☏. The filaments then are gathered and wound into a package. Source | OCV The glass fiber process Glass fiber is made by blending raw materials, melting them in a three-stage furnace furnace, extruding the molten glass through a bushing in the bottom of the forehearth, cooling the filaments with water and then applying a chemical size. It was not long before a number of other manufacturers entered the market and, through numerous process and product innovations, contributed to a worldwide structural composite reinforcements market, that according to market research firm Lucintel (Dallas, Texas, U.S.), reached 2.5 billion pounds in 2018. The new company marketed its glass fiber under the trade name Fiberglas, which was the genesis of the common generic reference to fiberglass. The patents were awarded in 1938, the same year that Owens-Illinois and Corning Glass Works (Corning, N.Y.) joined to form Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. The last two patents from this series, entitled “Textile Material” and “Glass Fabric,” foreshadowed the future of glass fiber as a textile reinforcement. Ensuing breakthroughs made the process commercially viable and cost-competitive. (Toledo, Ohio), record the key developments that step-changed the industry from producing discontinuous-fiber glass wool to making continuous glass filaments with diameters as small as 4 microns (4 millionths of a meter) and thousands of feet long. Patent applications filed between 19 by Games Slayter, John Thomas and Dale Kleist, employees of Owens-Illinois Glass Co. ![]() Though the ancient Phoenicians, Egyptians and Greeks knew how to melt glass and stretch it into thin fibers, it wasn’t until the 1930s that the process evolved into commercial-scale manufacturing of continuous fibers, which would later be used as structural reinforcements. Here, glass fiber ends are wound side-by-side onto warp beams (large rolls or cylinders) which will be used later in a fiberglass fabric-weaving operation. Source | AGYįiberglass is the original fiber reinforcement of modern composites. Glass fiber was the first reinforcement used in modern polymeric composites but springs from an ancient art.
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