Recycling of Glass Wool Waste

Abstract

The importance of environmentally friendly solution is an ever-increasing concern of industries all over the country. The glass wool industry has for a long time had a problem regarding waste from their production process. The solution today is to dump the waste at a landfill, which is regarded as an unsatisfactory solution. The most desired solution would be to throw the waste back into the furnace as raw material for the production process. However due to a certain amount of carbon based organic content, problems like excessive bubbles and reduction of surrounding glass will appear if the organic content reach the melt. In the production process, the melted glass is covered by a carpet of unbelted raw material. Waste added to the furnace would first be submerged in this carpet and be exposed to elevated temperatures, in an atmosphere low on oxygen, before reaching the melt.

This thesis has a twofold objective. First; develop a method to simulate the glass melting furnace to explore and analyze glass wool waste in the carpet layer of the furnace. Second; to explore the incineration of the waste at different temperatures and timeframes, both in atmospheric conditions and in oxygen lacking atmosphere like beneath the glass carpet. The method developed succeeded in determining the temperature gradient in the carpet, and thus which temperatures the waste was subjected to beneath different depths. At a depth of 8 cm and lower, the lack of oxygen prevented the complete incineration of the waste, and carbon residue was observed. In atmospheric conditions the organic content was quickly removed at temperatures significantly lower and at much shorter time then for the waste in the oxygen lacking atmosphere.