This year the annual Furnace Solutions conference held in Ceram, Stoke-on-Trent, UK saw a record number of delegates attend, resulting in spaces selling out, as well as the first training day: “Introduction to Refractories in Glass Melting”.
The Furnace Solutions 8 conference, organised by the Society of Glass Technology (SGT) was held on 6th June 2013 at Ceram, Stoke-on-Trent, UK. In the weeks leading up to the event, delegate places had already sold out, which was a first for the conference. This resulted in a bustling event and lots of interesting discussions after speaker presentations.
As usual, the conference programme covered issues from furnace design and refractories, to energy efficiency and emissions reduction in glassmaking.
There were presentations from CelSian Glass & Solar, DSF Refractories & Minerals Ltd, Glass Service Inc., Fives Stein Ltd., Air Liquide and F.I.C. (UK) to name a few.
The day came to a close with the presentation of the Michael Garvey award, which is a piece of specially commissioned art glassware given for the best paper of the day. This year, the award went to Trevor Wilson of DSF Refractories & Minerals Ltd (pictured) for his presentation on ‘Permeability: The hidden key to refractory performance’.
This was the first year that the event saw the introduction of a training day, which was held on 5th June. With the theme “Introduction to Refractories in Glass Melting”, the day was aimed at those looking for basic grounding information or as a refresher course and involved international experts from the world’s major refractory manufacturers focusing on the fundamentals of refractory properties and performance, but from a practical and modern perspective.
The date for the next Furnace Solutions has already been announced as Thursday 5th June 2014 and will also repeat the one-day training course on Wednesday 4th June 2014.
For more information contact Christine Brown on [email protected] or visit: www.furnacesolutions.co.uk