Heat Recovery Could Save Industrial Glass Industry 40% in Energy Use. By G. Pascal Zachary, NYTimes, June 15, 2008. "With higher energy prices seemingly here to stay, clever people are devising ways to reduce the resources and energy consumed in making a wide range of everyday essentials... Consider industrial glass, used to make windows in houses and cars, containers for liquids, screens for computers and cellphones, and hybrid products like fiberglass or fiber optics... Probably the quickest gains will come from better 'heat recovery' in manufacturing. Most glass is made in huge furnaces that reach temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees, then run continuously for as long as 10 years. Heat is lost at many points and, until recently, glassmakers didn't have much incentive to plug the leaks even though they knew how. Now they do. 'Heat recovery is so critical,' says Patrick Jackson, energy manager at Corning Inc., a leading glassmaker. 'It is a game changer.' He estimates that energy use could improve as much as 40 percent through reduced loss of heat. Last December, when Corning wanted to train a dozen people from various business groups in relevant techniques, the company sent them to Germany, which Mr. Jackson calls 'the Mecca of heat recovery.'"
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