Guardian Glass UK's efficient waste heat recovery system

Guardian Glass UK's efficient waste heat recovery system

Guardian Industries’ Glass Group has invested more than £4 million to develop and implement a customized Waste Heat Recovery System (WHRS) at its Goole 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 needed to operate Guardian’s full float line, which in turn will reduce its dependency on the grid and effectively reduce its CO2 emissions by some 6,000 tons per year. In terms of environmental impact, that’s the equivalent of taking nearly 2,200 cars off the road. Float glass manufacturing requires a large amount of energy. Running a furnace at about 1,600ºC around the clock, seven days a week, 365 days a year, consumes a lot of natural resources. The nature of the float glass process means that heat inevitably escapes the furnace.

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

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