• The Journal of Engineering Research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.199-205
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• 1998

Cullet Quality Control in auto glass bottle factory is the most important in recent days because of the increasing cost of materials in glass bottle. Since the composition of plate glass cullet is similar, the cullet quality using plate cullet in glass bottle factory is easily controlled. In addition to this, the price of plate glass cullet is so low that the cost reduction can be achieved. If the ratio of plate glass cullet and gush is over 25%, the liquidity of glass water become worse, which is caused by different compositions and viscosity of the components. As a results, Furnace bottom temperature becomes low and glass water becomes inhomogeneous. Thus production efficiency of glass bottle becomes low because of increasing devitrification in Dead Corner part in glass melting furnace. Three experimental methods – (1) increasing melting temperature, (2) using Booster, (3) using bubbler – were performed to increase the furnace bottom temperature and glass water homogeneity. The amounts of plate glass cullet was able to increase up to 90%, 70% and 60% without any devitrification using booster, bubbler and the method of glass melting temperature increase from $1480^{\circ}C$ to $1560^{\circ}C$ respectively. It is not possible to increase the glass melting temperature without the reduction of furnace operation time and the increase of fuel cost. The booster process has disadvantage of much electric energy consumption. Since the bubbler process uses physical convection of melting glass based on compression air, the homogeneity of molten glass is not so good as that of booster process but it can reduce the cost of glass bottle.