Sisecam’s Tunc Goruney won the Michael Garvey award for best paper at last week’s Furnace Solutions conference.

Mr Goruney’s paper, titled Pushing the Envelope of Waste Heat Recovery in Oxy-fuel Tableware Furnaces, outlined a project at Sisecam Pasabahce's 200 tonne per day furnace in Targovishte, Bulgaria.

Mr Goruney, a Corporate Energy and Environmental Manager at Turkey's Sisecam group, discussed waste heat recovery from an oxy-fuel furnace via the implementation of reactant preheating technology.

The technology has already been validated by several applications to extend the benefits of oxy-fuel combustion in tableware and float furnaces.

Mr Goruney reported up to 8% natural gas savings compared to an oxy-fuel furnace and in excess of a 90% NOx reduction compared to an end-fired regenerative air-fuel furnace.

The project was co-funded by a €1.7 million grant from the European Commission LIFE programme and also included a technology partner, Air Liquide.

Michael Garvey was a former Guardian Glass engineer who tragically died in a climbing accident just days after the 2008 Furnace Solutions event.

The conference had started with a joint-presentation from Dr Richard Hulme of Guardian Glass and Dr Nick Kirk of Glass Technology Services (GTS). They spoke about the Glass Futures project in the UK, which is a not for profit organisation created and owned by the glass community.

The £20 million project will be based at the Magna site in Rotherham, UK, due to open late next year.

“It is a global platform for growth, innovation and training for the whole glass community,” said Dr Kirk. “It is an ambitious project that is making progress,” he added.

Dr Hulme said the project was for the industry by the industry. It would provide the glass industry with an opportunity to try out new ideas without risk to production.

He said: “In many ways Glass Futures is an extension of the Society of Glass Technology itself. We want people to talk together and discuss common problems and find common solutions. They can compete in the marketplace on service and price, but can sort out the technology and the science together.”

There were 11 papers throughout the day-long conference, each of 30 minutes duration.

Speakers included Yakup Bayram of PaneraTech, Christoph Jatzwauk of Horn and Electroglass Managing Director, Richard Stormont.

More than 100 people attended the event held in Lucideon, Stoke-on-Trent, UK, and which included a training day before the conference.

Delegates were from a variety of furnace suppliers and glass manufacturers and included companies such as Parkinson Spencer Refractories, Teco, Zippe, Fives Stein, Drujba Glassworks, Beatson Clark, Allied Glass, Bormioli Luigi, Guardian Glass, Nippon Electric Glass and Ardagh Glass.

A full review of the event will be published in the next issue of Glass International.

Pictured: Mr Goruney (left) presented with the award by Melting Technical Committee Chairman, Nigel Longshaw