Advanced regenerator simulations have contributed to reduced costs and emissions in glass production

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Partner: GLASS SERVICE a.s.

Field: research, Výzkum, glass-making industry

GLASS SERVICE a.s. has been operating on the market for more than 30 years and has expanded its activities worldwide during this time. The product portfolio is based on a combination of basic research in glass melting, advanced laboratory measurements, and mathematical modelling of glass melting processes. Services provided to glass manufacturers enable them to improve quality, reduce energy consumption, and transition away from fossil fuels. The company is based in Vsetín.

The cooperation between the European Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava and GLASS SERVICE a.s. consisted in creating a detailed simulation of regenerators (equipment for residual heat recovery from flue gases) with different types of fillings, comparison of the distribution of flow inside and derivation of parameters of an alternative representation – a porous wall. Thanks to the power of the supercomputer operated by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava, it was possible to use advanced turbulence and radiation models in the simulation, thus significantly refining the results. Machine learning methods were used to analyse and process data from detailed simulations and surrogate models of the porous wall.

Based on the results, one of the flagship products, the internally developed GFM software package for mathematical modelling of glass furnaces, was added. The new tool allows the design of regenerators to be optimised, which leads to savings in investment costs for the regenerator’s construction and operating costs due to higher heat regeneration efficiency. The new functionality can be foreseen to increase interest in GFM and strengthen its position in this field of simulations.

The cooperation with GLASS SERVICE a.s. will continue in 2025, specifically in heat transfer models, depending on the flow characteristics. The company also plans detailed research in electrode and refractory corrosion.

“The cooperation with the EDIH Ostrava and the use of the supercomputer operated by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center represented a breakthrough in regenerator simulations. Thanks to the high performance, we were able to conduct detailed analyses that would not have been possible otherwise. The results will allow us to optimise the regenerators, and, as a result, we will be able to recover more heat in the process. This leads to cost savings while reducing both CO2 and NOx emissions,” evaluated the cooperation Tomas Denk, Head of GFM SW Development at Glass Service a.s.