A website focused on a project to reduce CO2 emissions from the glass manufacturing process has gone live.
The Life Sugar project aims to investigate the use of hydrogen-based combustion in the glass sector which could pave the way to a carbon-free industry.
The acronym stands for: SUstainable Glass – Architecture of a furnace heat recovery system including a steam Reformer
Steam reforming is a consolidated process for hydrogen and syngas production in many industrial sectors.
The novelty of this application in glass production is that the heat for the Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR) reaction will not be generated on purpose by direct fuel combustion, but will be recovered from waste gases that otherwise would be lost into the atmosphere.
The Life Sugar will operate interventions in glass industry capable of reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions by recovering the residual heat from exhaust flue gases from the combustion of fossil fuels to produce thermal energy, by means of an additional thermal and chemical vector (in addition to the combustion air) represented by the hydrogen-rich syngas produced by an endothermic SMR reaction.
The project started in June this year and will finish in November 2023. The project partners include Italy’s Stara Glass, Johnson Matthey, Italian research organisation Stazione Sperimentale del Vetro, and the University of Genoa. It is cofunded by the LIFE instrument of the European Community.
The project website is https://www.lifesugarproject.com/
