Melting Behavior of Pelletized Batch for Glass Manufacture.

The melting behavior of different sizes of pellets (5 to 15 mm) has been studied in a model tank furnace and compared with ordinary free-flowing batch. The glass was a typical commercial composition. In comparing metling behavior an attempt was made to operate with constant heat flux from both the combustion space and the melt. Melting behavior was studied by making temperature and conductivity measurements in the batch layer. It was shown that the optimum pellet size lay between 10 and 12. 5 mm diameter and this decreased batch-free time by 40% compared with normal batch.