New furnace at Stoelzle Oberglas reduces energy consumption by 13%
As a perfect start in 2022 to the International Year of Glass, Stoelzle Oberglas has successfully completed the rebuild and expansion of its flint furnace, a €22 million investment that aims to make production on the site more efficient and also more sustainable in terms of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions.
The new furnace will reach a daily capacity of around 270 tons of melted glass.
State-of-the-art melting technology will reduce the process melting energy by an estimated 13% per ton of glass. Improved electric-boosting allows the use of more green electricity in a flexible way in order to reduce the consumption of natural gas.
New batch formulas, which are based on the use of PCR glass and secondary raw materials, have been tested successfully throughout the past months.
Examination in the Stoelzle in-house glass lab proved that the so called Flint Prestige Recycling glass, which has already been recognised by the Austrian Trigos sustainability award, will reduce the CO2 emissions by 16% and energy consumption by 4% without compromising the glass quality and brilliant flint colour.
The new flint furnace and the new batch compositions are two of the main milestones on the Glass Group’s roadmap towards decreasing the CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030.
The investments include three new state of the art IS machines and several new cold end quality control machines as well as packaging robots.
