Pilkington Plc

Peter James Whitfield

Robert Emmett Trevelyan

David Martlew

Edward Hargreaves

Barry T Grundy

Andrew Michael Keeley

Graham Unwin

A float glass production facility comprising a furnace including a melter, a refiner and a working end, the working end having two or more exits, each of which supplies a separate canal and float glass forming chamber, the working end being operable so that the glass flow through each of the two or more exits is independent of the flow of glass through the other exits.

Float glass production

A method and apparatus for making float glass, wherein the glass is stirred in the conditioning zone adjacent the entrance to the float canal so as to attenuate the glass across the entire width of the float canal.

Method and apparatus for making glass

A glass melting tank has a melting chamber, a shallow uniflow conditioning chamber, a shallow refining chamber and a riser chamber between the melting chamber and refining chamber. Heat is input to glass in the riser chamber by electrodes located centrally in the riser chamber near the base of the riser chamber. Temperature sensors sense the temperature entering the riser chamber through a throat and near the base of a downstream wall of the riser chamber and the heat input is controlled to produce torroidal flow in the riser chamber.

Glass melting furnace with control of the glass flow in the riser

Glass melting process

An apparatus for depositing onto the surface of a moving ribbon of hot glass a coating formed from the reaction of at least two gaseous reactants. The apparatus includes an open-faced coating chamber in which the gaseous reactants are caused to flow in contact with the glass surface to be coated in a direction substantially parallel to the direction of movement of the glass so as to form the desired coating on the glass surface. The coating chamber opens downwardly onto, and extends across the width of, the glass surface to be coated, and has a first inlet means for providing a flow of a first gaseous reactant over the glass surface through the chamber over the width thereof, and a second inlet means constituted by an inlet channel which extends across the ceiling of the chamber over the width of the chamber for introducing a second gaseous reactant to the flow of the first gaseous reactant in the coating chamber. The ceiling of the coating chamber has a stepped configuration at the juncture of the said inlet channel and the coating chamber, so that the ceiling of the coating chamber on the upstream side of the inlet channel is at a higher level than the ceiling of the coating chamber on the downstream side of the said inlet channel. A first gas distributor conveys the first gaseous reactant from a gas supply duct to said first inlet means, and a second gas distributor conveys the second gaseous reactant from a second gas supply duct to said second inlet means. Exhaust means are located downstream of the first and second inlet means leading from the coating chamber for removal of spent gases from the coating chamber.

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St. Helens, United Kingdom

Peter James Whitfield