Preliminary Energy Assessment of Glass Production in Nigeria

This article describes how the high energy consumption associated with glass factories has been responsible for high cost of manufacturing of glass. However, there is a need for a systematic approach to assess energy consumption in the factory in order to avoid wastage. Previous methods of assessment could not take into cognizance of assessing the entire unit. Additionally, the methods are mostly complex and not straight forward"To overcome these constraints, an approach for audit energy consumption was developed. Energy study was conducted in a glass production plant in Ughelli, Nigeria to determine the energy requirements for the production of glass. The energy consumption patterns of the units operations were evaluated for production of 200 tonnes of glass bottles. The analysis revealed that there were ten defined units in a glass production. The electrical, thermal and manual energy required for the productions were 84.31, 15.59 and 0.10% of the total energy, respectively. The average energy intensity was estimated to be 818.53 MJ/tonne. The most energy intensive operation was identified as the melting process of the furnace with an energy intensity of 395.94 MJ/tonne, which accounts for 48.37% of the total energy required for glass production. Improvement on the design of the melting furnace is suggested to make the system more energy efficient.