Leaders gathered at Pilkington UK’s Greengate site in St Helens, Liverpool City Region this week, to drive the conversation around hydrogen marking the North West ‘stop’ on the Decarbonised Glass Alliance’s (DGA) Hydrogen Roadshow.

The event brought together HyNet and HyDeploy project team members with industry and local stakeholders to discuss the region’s innovative hydrogen activities and development.

It was announced on the day that Pilkington UK had just completed a project using a blend of hydrogen with natural gas in the furnace over a full five-day period.

The shortlist for the annual Glass Focus awards has been announced. Now in their eighth year, the awards will once again celebrate the achievements of the glass industry and its supply chain with a return to an in person, black-tie event on 18 November at the Brooklyn Hotel in Manchester.

Commenting on behalf of the judges, Nick Kirk Technical director at British Glass said; “This year the quality and number of entries has been extraordinary and a real challenge to judge. It has been very encouraging to read and see some great examples of products, techniques, and practices from across the industry.”

Istanbul TV and Radio Tower is one of the reference projects brought to life with the innovative products of Şişecam Flat Glass. The company's Tinted Float Glass Grey and Laminated Low-E Glass provide low reflectance, effective heat and solar control, safety, security and noise control in order to meet the different needs of the project.

Architect Melike Altınışık describes the project and the use of glass in the project as follows: “The art of natural lighting allows the designer to use light as a design material in the design process, as well as shaping the space and designing extraordinary spaces.”

The light creates a transition between mysterious shadows and sharp colours in the futuristic design of Istanbul TV and Radio Tower rising 369m.

The glass industry is part of the energy-intensive industries posing a major challenge to fulfil the CO2 reduction targets of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Decarbonisation options for the glass industry will be exploed by Michael Zier from Institut für Energie- und Klimaforschung in an online seminar on 26 October at 14:00 CET hosted by GlassTrend for its members.

To address the challenge of decarbonizing the glass industry, options are identified and structured according to fuel switch, waste heat recovery and process intensification.

The different options are evaluated in terms of technology readiness level, CO2 reduction potential and economic feasibility.

Stoelzle Oberglas in Köflach, Austria is receiving a €22 million investment from Stoelzle Glass Group.

The demolition of the flint glass furnace, which has been in operation for eight years started in October.

The whole rebuild is scheduled to be completed within eight weeks. The new expanded furnace will reach around 270 tpd and will be state-of-the-art in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability.

Modern melting technology will reduce the amount of energy used in the melting process by an estimated 13% per ton of glass. Improved E-boosting allows the use of green electricity in a flexible way in order to reduce the consumption of natural gas.

Fifty years ago the glass industry was coming under mounting pressure to seek cleaner alternatives to fossil fuel energy as plants on established sites became surrounded by growing towns.

The SORG concept for this challenge was to create an all-electric furnace. Due to the direct energy input into the glass, it would also show a much higher efficiency.

Without the necessity to have heat transfer from a combustion space, the logical solution was to cover the entire surface area of the glass bath with raw materials, forming an insulating blanket, while this cold-top all-electric melter also required a vertical process.

The Henri Badoux vineyard has given its emblematic lizard an elegant update.

The new olive-coloured edition of the bottle is produced by the Vetropack glass works in St-Prex and the white glass version by Vetropack Austria.

Henri Badoux founded the vineyard that shares his name in 1908. Since then, the family enterprise has grown continually.

The Badoux name is inseparable from the lizard that has adorned the labels of his wine bottles for over a century.

In 2021, the vineyard underwent a rebranding campaign. White and red wine are now hitting the shelves in an olive-coloured 0.7l bottle, while rosé is bottled in white glass.

The future is strongly relying on the sustainable actions. Rising global temperatures and diminishing natural resources threaten all populations, including those yet to be born.

The major impact of glass production is caused by atmospheric emissions from melting activities.

The goal has been set to find solutions and Hrastnik1860 are paving the way for a bright and sustainable industry.

The most sustainable glass bottle in the world is not only a breakthrough for Hrastnik1860, but above all represents proof that it is possible to make the much-needed transition.

The organisers of the 83rd Conference on Glass Problems are inviting engineers, educators, students and solutions providers working with aspects of glass manufacturing to submit abstracts for this leading industry event next year.

Broad topics of interest include: Glass melting and quality; combustion and heat transfer; refractories; process control, sensors and Industry 4.0; modelling of glass melting and processing; raw materials, batching, cullet and recycling; forming issues and container customisation; safety, emissions, environment and respirable silica; sustainability, carbon reduction and energy management; furnace design and reconstruction; furnace life extension and maintenance; and new topics relevant to glass manufacturing.