Glassmakers should have June 5 and 6 in their diaries for this year’s Furnace Solutions Conference.

The event has a strong tradition of pulling together relevant, practical and topical papers from leading speakers in their field.

This year’s conference will start with the Training Day, The Batch – Guilty as Charged, which will concentrate on practical issues related to the batch - potential problems the batch or batch plant can cause in the furnace and to glass quality, with ways of identifying and remedying them including techniques to analysis raw materials, the batch and glass quality.

The Training Day includes panel sessions with all speakers, giving delegates the opportunity to quiz the panel.

The line-up of speakers includes Dr Richard White of Lucideon, Peter West of Ardagh Group, Dr Richard Hulme of Guardian Glass, Martyn Marshall of GTS, Lutz Fleckenstein and Matthias Haas of Sorg.

The morning and afternoon sessions will each conclude with a panel discussion where delegates will have the opportunity to quiz all speakers.

The final presentation of the Training Day will by Trevor Wilson of DSF Refractories and this will look at the effect of batch carryover on regenerator refractories.

It will also be the Institute of Materials Mining and Minerals 2019 Mellor Memorial Lecture, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Institute and the birth of renowned ceramicist Joseph William Mellor FRS.

The evening social event, the Geoff Evans Dinner, this year will be at Totally Delicious in Trentham Gardens and will afford another ideal networking opportunity.

The programme for Thursday’sFurnace Solutions Conference is:

*Sebastian Woltz of EME, who will discuss the challenges facing a batch plant supplier when a Batch Plant is upgraded.
* Andy Reynolds of Fives Stein, who will be speaking about refractory corrosion, prediction and prevention while electric melting.
* Frank Schuurmans of Libbey in the Netherlands, who will share their experience of using Optimelt at the Leerdam plant. With contributions from equipment supplier Praxair.
* Andrew Bowker of the HSE who will review the HSE’s plan for manufacturing in 2019/2020.
* Benjamin Koster of Hotwork, who discuss the possibility of regenerator repairs without production losses.
* First time speaker at Furnaces Solutions will be Ms Burcin Gul, from Sisecam. Manchester University-educated Ms Gul will present her work modelling the furnace. She presented a paper on “Numerical investigation of side through port and under port siring systems on float glass furnaces” at the 2016 SGT Centenary Conference with particular attention to burner angle.
* Dr Michel Gaubil of Sefpro, who will describe its findings on thermomechanical stresses induced, by the glass corrosion process, in fused cast AZS soldier blocks.
* Virtual Reality is becoming part of everyday life VRMT with introduce delegates to a VR system developed for virtual IS machine training.

The value of attending the Furnace Solutions conference was acknowledged, last year, by Nikolaus Sorg’s Sales Director, Fred Aker, who said: “This was my first Training Day and Furnace Solutions and I was very impressed with the format and quality of the visitors.

"The format allowed for a lot of networking and the breaks kept the presentations fresh. The organisation was perfect, and you kept things moving on time. I don't know if I personally can attend regularly but I will recommend that someone from SORG does take part.”

We look forward to greeting you at this year’s Furnace Solutions, which will be held a Lucideon, Stoke-on-Trent on June 5 and 6.

For more information visit the website www.furnacesolutions.co.uk or contact Christine Brown [email protected]