Read our latest article in Glass Worldwide where Neil Simpson discusses how glass producers can optimise emissions using portable gas analysers in glass melting furnaces.
For the whole of my professional career, I have been using electronic based gas analysers. I was shown how to use ‘Orsat type’ chemical instruments but found them unreliable and not that user-friendly. The first instruments I used regularly were to analyse oxygen and CO, which are the most important for safety and combustion efficiency. That is still the case today, however oxides of nitrogen and sulphur are now also important from an emissions perspective. The first gas analyser that I had with %O2, ppm CO, ppm NO, ppm NO2 and ppm SO2 was over 25 years ago and although slightly smaller, cost the same as a small family car.
As part of a company equipment standardisation, I was actually given this instrument and it still actually works, although it is too old to be used credibly. Thankfully, today’s instruments are now less expensive and much more compact. In 2016, I started working alongside AMETEK Land using the company’s Near Infrared Borescope (NIR B) in-furnace thermal imaging system for real-time temperature monitoring inside glass melting furnaces. However, we identified, using AMETEK Land’s Lancom 4 gas analyser, that there was a direct correlation between peak flame
Read the full article in Glass Worldwide September / October 2019