Estimation of and barriers to waste heat recovery from harsh environments in industrial processes

The glass industry is part of the energy-intensive industry posing a major challenge to fulfill the CO2 reduction targets of the Paris Climate Agreement. The segments of the glass industry, e.g., container or flat glass, are quite diverse and attribute to different glass products with different requirements to product quality and various process options. To address the challenge of decarbonizing the glass industry, firstly, an inventory of current glass products, processes and applied technologies in terms of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions is conducted. Secondly, decarbonization options are identified and structured according to fuel substitution, waste heat recovery and process intensification. Due to the high share of energy-related CO2 emissions, electrical melting and hydrogen combustion, or a combination of both, are the most promising options to decarbonize the glass industry but further research, design adjustments and process improvements are necessary. Furthermore, electricity and hydrogen prices have to decrease or fossil fuels must become more expensive, to be cost-competitive relative to fossil fuels and respective infrastructures have to be constructed or adjusted. Various heat recovery options have great potential for CO2 savings but can be technically challenging or have not yet been considered for techno-economic reasons.

A Review of Decarbonization Options for the Glass Industry

Performance of firebrick resistance-heated energy storage for industrial heat applications and round-trip electricity storage

Experimental investigation on H2S and SO2 sulphur poisoning and regeneration of a commercially available Ni-catalyst during methane tri-reforming

The overall efficiency of a regenerative chamber for a glass furnace mainly relies on the thermo-fluid dynamics of air and waste gas alternatively flowing through stacks of refractory bricks (checkers) determining the heat recovery. A numerical approach could effectively support the design strategies in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the current technology and hopefully suggest new perspectives of improvement. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) scheme for the regenerator is proposed, where the real geometry of the solid phase is modelled as a porous solid phase exchanging heat with the gas stream. Satisfactory data fitting proved the reliability of the present approach, whose applications are proposed in the last section of this study, to confirm how such a CFD modelling could be helpful in improving the overall energy efficiency of the regeneration chamber.

/pdf/cfd-analysis-of-regenerative-chambers-for-energy-efficiency-knt58jnws7.pdf

Renil Anthony

Papers

Performance analysis for glass furnace regenerator