I have been involved in the design, development, installation and operation of Float and other glass manufacturing plants world-wide for almost 40 years, and I am pleased to be associated with Ghani Group as Project Director for the Ghani Flat Glass Project. As a young Graduate, Mechanical Engineer in 1960's, I joined Corporate Engineering at Pilkington in the UK, at the time when the company had just invented the 'Flat' Glass process and was about to go for commercial exploitation of the new technology.
'Flat' Glass is free from the visual distortions which are characteristic of the older Fourcault and Pittsburgh vertical draw processes. It has fire polished surfaces, without the need for expensive grinding and polishing.
With 260 'Flat' Glass plants in operation or under construction world-wide, 'Flat' Glass has become the defacto international standard for Flat Glass.
The continuous manufacturing process is now highly developed using advanced materials and control technologies and the new Ghani plant is no exception. It has a capacity of 350 tons per day. Product quality will be according to international standards.
The raw materials, Silica sand (73%), Calcium oxide (9%), Soda (13%) and Magnesium (4%) are weighed and mixed into batches to which recycled glass (cullet) is added. The batched raw materials are transferred to a massive gas-fired furnace where they are melted and refined at temperatures in excess of 1500 oC. Every operation is carefully controlled.
The molten glass leaves the furnace at a temperature of about 1100 oC and is "floated onto a bath of molten in where it forms a continuous ribbon with a working width of 3210 mm and thickness between 2 and 22 mm.
On-site power generation gives a total capacity 8.5 MW from Gas, Oil, Hydel, and UPS back up. Erection work has been completed and Inshallah, trial production will start next month.