Page 53 - Glass Machinery Plants & Accessories no. 3-2019
P. 53

Glassmaking is a very energy consuming                                      est Styrian glass man-
                                                                                        ufacturer     Stölzle-
            process and today’s glassmakers are                                WOberglas impressively
                                                                               proves that even energy-intensive
            increasingly keen on implementing                                  industrial companies have a
                                                                               green thumb. In 2018, a huge
            technologies and machinery which do                                rooftop photovoltaic system went
                                                                               into operation, which had been
            not only save energy (and money), but                              installed by the Austrian com-
                                                                               pany Oekosolar PV on the eight
            also protect our planet. Stölzle-Oberglas                          roofs of the Stölzle warehouses.
                                                                                  Each of the eight individual
            speaks about the recently installed PV                             PV systems has a nominal output
                                                                               of around 200 kilowatts peak,
            system, which can cover  25 per cent of the                        so a total of 1.6 MW peak,
                                                                               which corresponds to 25 per cent
            company’s electrical power request.                                of the electrical power which is
                                                                               required by the Austrian glass
                                                                               plant at peak times.

                                                                               NOT ONLY PHOTOVOLTAICS
                                                                                  “This is the first photovoltaic
                                                                               system to have been installed in
                                                                               the Glass Group, but we are
                                                                               confident that this project will be
                                                                               extended to other Stölzle plants
                                                                               as well, as we already see that we
                                                                               can compensate quite a bit of our
                                                                               carbon footprint through such
                                                                               green initiatives,” confirms the
                                                                               Group’s CEO Georg Feith.
                                                                                  The huge photovoltaic project
                                                                               has only been one of more initia-
                                                                               tives, set up by Stölzle recently.
                                                                               Besides this, all plants of the
                                                                               Group strive to optimize their
                                                                               energy consumption and the
                                                                               recovery of waste heat of the
                                                                               furnaces.

                                                                               WASTE GAS HEAT
                                                                               EXCHANGER
                                                                                  At the Austrian glass plant,
                                                                               a very efficient waste gas heat
                                                                               exchanger was implemented in
                                                                               2015, which recovers the waste
                                                                               heat from the two melting fur-
                                                                               naces used in the glass produc-
                                                                               tion and feeds it into the dis-
                                                                               trict heating network of Energie
                                                                               Steiermark. This results in com-
                                                                               pensating for 4,300 tonnes of
                                                                               CO2 every year.
                                                                                  The Glass Groups initiatives
                                                                               to compensate the CO2 emis-
                                                                               sions caused in glass production




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