Efficiency of Selecting Container Glass Composition

Abstract

The analysis of the efficiency of sectional glass-forming machines identifies technological reserves existing in the domestic production of glass containers. Comparative analysis of the physicochemical, technological, and working properties of alternative clear glass compositions for containers glass is performed and demonstrates the advantages of high-calcium compositions. The ways for making use of theses advantages to raise the efficiency of container glass production are proposed.The glass container industry in Russia is expanding capacities for glass bottle production. The introduction of additional production lines and factories has significantly decreased the disparity between offer and demand on this market which is constantly offered new types of products.The requirements from the side of food and liquor companies imposed on the quality of glass containers have lately substantially grown. Therefore, the deciding factors in producing high-quality products made of clear and tinted glass include the optimization and strict compliance with technological regulations at all process stages, consideration of melting and firing specifics (redox potential of material, batch, and glass melt, chemical composition of glass, effect of impurities and small additives, quality of cullet, etc.). At the same time, the domestic glass container manufacturers not always can solve quality and design problems, therefore, producers of drinks often have to look for foreign bottle suppliers, especially for premium product.The discrepancy between domestic glass product and the European quality standard to a large extent is due to an imperfect technological process. Contemporary domestic factories use machinery produced by world leaders such as Emhart, Bottero, and BDF, which has high efficiency and product quality potential. The degree of implementation of machinery potential depends on the existing level of the production process.The most objective information on performance of each production facility compared with other factories can be obtained from the analysis of machinery efficiency provided by the Emhart Company [1]. Participants in the machinery analysis project send production parameters from their factories to the Emhart who processes and compares data and circulates processed results to the customers. Based on the data in [1, 2], we have constructed diagrams of the efficiency of sectional automated machines (Fig. 1). The real parameters of machine performance achieved at different companies in the form of a variance of a number of cuts per minute are indicated on the background of the curve indicating the declared efficiency of automatic machines.The difference in machine efficiency is quite obvious. Thus, for making bottles weighing 300 g the number of cuts varies from 8 to 11 per min. It is easy to calculate that reaching the top efficiency on a 10-section machine with the double-drop feed is equivalent to an additional production of 8.5 thousand units per day, or over 3 millions units per year. Obviously, there is a ...