Numerical investigation of electric heating impacts on solid/liquid glass flow patterns.

A typical glass furnace consists of a combustion space and a melter. Intense heat is generated from the combustion of fuel and air/oxygen in the combustion space. This heat is transferred mainly by radiation to the melter in order to melt sand and cullet (scrap glass) eventually creating glass products. Many furnaces use electric boosters to enhance glass melting and increase productivity. The coupled electric/combustion heat transfer patterns are key to the glass making processes. The understanding of the processes can lead to the improvement of glass quality and furnace efficiency. The effects of electrical boosting on the flow patterns and heat transfer in a glass melter are investigated using a multiphase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code with addition of an electrical boosting model. The results indicate that the locations and spacing of the electrodes have large impacts on the velocity and temperature distributions in the glass melter. With the same total heat input, the batch shape (which is determined by the overall heat transfer and the batch melting rate) is kept almost the same. This indicates that electric boosting can be used to replace part of heat by combustion. Therefore, temperature is lower in the combustion space and the life of the furnace can be prolonged. The electric booster can also be used to increase productivity without increasing the furnace size.