BOC TAKES GLASS MELTING TECHNOLOGY TO THE NEXT LEVEL

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BOC TAKES GLASS MELTING TECHNOLOGY TO THE NEXT LEVEL
04 December 2001 - BOC Gases

BOC unveiled its patented BOC Convective Glass Melting system at the recent Conference on Glass Problems, in Urbana, Illinois. CGM is a radical new approach to glass melting that significantly increases furnace capacity and improves glass quality. It can also be used to extend the life and improve the performance of ailing furnaces.

"In the face of increasing financial pressure, glassmakers want to conserve capital and improve the productivity of their existing assets," says Sam Peterson, vice president and general manager, BOC glass technologies. "The BOC Convective Glass Melting System provides the means. Through innovations to oxy-fuel technology, CGM delivers a step-change improvement in the melting rate of fossil fuel furnaces. It can be used to boost the capacity of an existing furnace, or as the base technology of a new furnace. CGM routinely delivers capacity increases of twenty-five percent. Some customers have achieved increases greater than fifty percent."

CGM differs from traditional oxy-fuel and air-fuel systems in the placement and effectiveness of its burners. CGM directs oxy-fuel flames approximately downward onto the batch surface at the charging end of the furnace. CGM flames impinge directly on the raw batch material. As a result, batch melts faster than it does under air-fuel or conventional oxy-fuel flames.

Glassmakers can retrofit the BOC Convective Glass Melting System onto existing air-fuel or oxygen-fuel furnaces and use the accelerated glass melting capability to increase production within a given furnace, increase the pack/melt ratio, or reduce/eliminate electric boost. Glassmakers also have the option of integrating CGM into new furnace construction. Doing so would allow them to reduce furnace size, eliminate regenerators and recuperators, and eliminate electric boosting systems.

CGM has operated in more than a dozen furnaces in the float, container, tableware, television, and fiberglass sectors. Customers have used CGM to recover capacity lost near the end of their furnace’s life, to boost capacity above design level, and to achieve substantial improvements in yield and product quality.

http://www.boc.com

About: BOC Gases
Through its PGS line of business, BOC supplies gas and related solutions to the chemicals, petroleum, glass, water services, electronic packaging, fibre optics, hydrogen energy, metals and food industries. BOC helps meet customer needs in a variety of ways, from the supply of a single gas or application through to designing, constructing and operating fully integrated gas and utilities schemes.

The BOC Group, which serves two million customers in more than 50 countries, is one of the largest and most global of the world's leading gases companies. It employs some 44,500 people worldwide and had annual sales of over £4.3 billion in 2003. Further information about The BOC Group may be obtained on the Internet at www.boc.com

The BOC Group has an international portfolio of companies grouped for management control and reporting into three lines of business: Process Gas Solutions, Industrial and Special Products, and BOC Edwards. It also has a specialist logistics business, Gist.

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