Linde's OPTIFIRE™ family of burners with oxy-fuel melting technology can decrease fuel consumption and increase productivity due to faster melting cycles.
Achieve excellence in your production and process efficiency with Linde
The art of making glass is over 5,000 years old. At Linde, we aim to improve this ancient craft in a way that boosts productivity and quality while helping the glass industry meet today’s goals of energy conservation, decarbonization, and emission abatement.
With our full range of industrial gases, technologies, and equipment, we can help improve glass quality, plus help save you money by offering ways to burn less fuel more efficiently.
Reduce Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint
Linde's OPTIMELT™ Thermochemical Regenerator technology, an advanced heat recovery technology for oxyfuel fired glass furnaces, is based on a unique waste heat recovery concept using endothermic chemical reaction.
Heat stored in a regenerator checker during the flue gas exhausting cycle is recovered during the reforming cycle by preheating and reforming a mixture of natural gas and recycled flue gas.
The result is a net reduction in energy consumption by up to 30% versus oxy-fuel and air-fuel glass furnaces, respectively, as well as a corresponding reduction in fuel-based Scope 1 CO2 emissions.
Diverse Portfolio of Burners
Linde's OPTIFIRE® family of burners is diverse, offering technologies tailored to your specific needs.
The OPTIFIRE CGM burner is a unique oxyfuel technology that transfers extra heat to the glass melt by positioning CGM burners vertically instead of horizontally. This triggers convection, which combines with regular radiant transfer to boost heat transfer rates.
The OPTIFIRE JL oxy-fuel burner is based on Linde’s patented Dilute Oxygen Combustion (DOC) technology. This burner features a unique two-zone flame for ultra-low NOx emission and partial furnace atmosphere stratification.
The upper fuel-rich primary zone produces a high luminosity stable flame for high heat transfer efficiency. The lower secondary oxygen zone helps control flame geometry and temperature profile. The deeply staged combustion results in up to 90% lower NOx versus conventional oxy-fuel burners.
The OPTIFIRE Wide Flame Burner has been successfully implemented in glass melting furnaces. It features a staged combustion process that provides high flame luminosity and low momentum, allowing optimum heat transfer during the melting process and preventing hot spots. The burner generates a wide flame pattern that covers up to 200% more glass surface than conventional oxy-fuel burners.
The OPTIFIRE XD burner is an extreme duty burner designed to offer a continuous, low-momentum flame with reduced maintenance interruptions.
The XD burner works to mitigate condensate build-up around the cooler oxygen ports. This is an important feature because most staged oxy-fuel burners, that operate in a glass atmosphere, tend to build up condensate quickly with continuous furnace operation.
The aforementioned burners are equipped with a “quick-release” feature for easy installation and removal of burner metallic components.
Optimizing Power Consumption
Linde’s integrated OPTIFLO2® system provides glass customers an effective combination of capital and power efficiency.
The overall system combines Linde’s advanced VITRON® Vacuum Pressure Swing Adsorption (VPSA) plant with a customized oxy-fuel combustion system and burners from Linde’s OPTIFIRE portfolio.
A key feature of this integrated system is the elimination of the product O2 compression step, resulting in significant savings in power costs over the duration of the furnace campaign.
OXYSERVICE® Portfolio of Services for Air-Fuel Furnaces
Linde offers a diverse set of oxygen-based options to increase pull rate, recover pull rate in case of damaged regenerators, extend furnace campaign, and reduce NOx emissions of air-fuel furnaces of all types; side-port, end-port, and recuperative.
