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Glass International - Advancing Furnace Heat-ups Through Infrared Monitoring

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

In the latest edition of Glass International Magazine, Neil Simpson discusses the use of infrared monitoring to assist with the heat-up of the Glass Futures’ pilot furnace in St Helens, UK.

Glass International - Advancing Furnace Heat-ups Through Infrared Monitoring"My son, Ben, Design Engineer at LAND, asked me if I could suggest a topic for his MSC Mechanical Engineering dissertation which could help the company.

Having seen the success of the Near Infrared (NIR)-b and Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) during my career, I thought we could use these instruments to help heat-up a glass furnace from its ambient temperature to approximately 1600°C. IF we could show this on a high temperature application such as glass, then we could prove it would work on ALL furnaces.

In addition, based on work on some non-glass applications, there was a third Medium Wave Infrared (MWIR) instrument which also had a borescope option.

Glass Futures’ 30 tpd oxy-fired pilot furnace, designed by Stara Glass and heated-up by Spie Excelsius, was seen as the ideal candidate since the design was already in the public domain.

LAND are members of Glass Futures and an NIR-b-2K with LPAR retraction was already in the scope of supply. From an equipment perspective, an MWIR with borescope was required to fit the same LPAR retraction. Due to the low temperature range, there is not a borescope version of the LWIR and so this instrument was provided with a cooled housing.

From a recording and analysis perspective, the benefit of the ImagePro Software is that it works with all three instruments. Beyond setting the desired temperature range of the instrument, everything is automatic with data files confirming the instrument type and range."

Click here to read the full article in the Glass International Magazine