Soda-lime silicate glass as described by CAS covers almost the entirety of products manufactured by the flat glass industry. Glass for Europe therefore invites all flat glass manufacturers in Europe and worldwide to use this CAS number when identifying their soda-lime silicate glass products.
The new CAS number is 2446523-50-6 and its full CA index name is: Aluminum calcium magnesium silicon sodium oxide (Al 0-0.03 Ca 0.06-0.11 Mg 0-0.07 Si 0.56-0.74 Na 0.21-0.23 O 1.46-1.63), where the values correspond to atomic percentage with O expressed on top of the other elements.
A synonym name is linked to this CA index name with a description more commonly used as expressed in weight percentage (cf. EN 572-1): Silicon calcium sodium magnesium aluminium oxide (weight %: Si 32.0-35.0, Ca 3.5-10.1, Na 7.4-11.9, Mg 0.0-3.7, Al 0.0-1.6, O37.7-57.1) soda-lime-silicate glass.
A CAS Registry Number is a unique numerical identifier assigned by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) to every chemical substance described in the open scientific literature, including organic and inorganic compounds, minerals, isotopes, alloys and non-structurable materials (UVCBs, substances of unknown or variable composition, complex reaction products, or biological origin).
CAS numbers are used by scientists, industry and regulatory bodies worldwide as each number is specific to only one substance and allows to identify it regardless of all other ways a substance can be described. In Europe for example, the European Chemical Agency (ECHA), which is in charge of implementing the REACH regulation on chemicals, uses CAS numbers among other listings, for identifying substances.
To date, only one generic CAS number existed to identify all types of glass, however this number was not accurately describing soda-lime silicate glass and, in fact, should have never been used for soda-lime silicate glass. For this reason, CAS experts agreed to create a specific CAS number describing precisely soda-lime silicate glass to be more accurate and avoid any potential confusion.