Oxygen Transport Membranes for Efficient Glass Melting

Glass manufacturing is an energy-intensive process in which oxy-fuel combustion can offer advantages over the traditional air-blown approach. Examples include the reduction of NO(x) and particulate emissions, improved furnace operations and enhanced heat transfer. This paper presents a one-dimensional mathematical model solving mass, momentum and energy balances for a planar oxygen transport membrane module. The main modelling parameters describing the surface oxygen kinetics and the microstructure morphology of the support are calibrated on experimental data obtained for a 30 μm thick dense La(0.6)Sr(0.4)Co(0.2)Fe(0.8)O(3-δ) (LSCF) membrane layer, supported on a 0.7 mm porous LSCF structure. The model is then used to design and evaluate the performance of an oxygen transport membrane module integrated in a glass melting furnace. Three different oxy-fuel glass furnaces based on oxygen transport membrane and vacuum swing adsorption systems are compared to a reference air-blown unit. The analysis shows that the most efficient membrane-based oxyfuel furnace cuts the energy demand by ~22% as compared to the benchmark air-blown case. A preliminary economic assessment shows that membranes can reduce the overall glass production costs compared to oxyfuel plants based on vacuum swing adsorption technology.