Engineering Simulation On The Melting Process Of All-Electric Melting Furnaces For Borosilicate Glass

Borosilicate glass has a very high-performance, such as good thermal stability,chemical stability, mechanical properties, machine performance and optical properties.Compared with conventional soda-lime-silica float glass, borosilicate flat glass will beapplied in some new areas where it is high value-added and has a broad market space. Butborosilicate glass has high viscosity and melting temperature，then the boron is volatileand separated into different phases with silicon easily. Currently in all of the glassfurnaces, the electric melting furnace is easier to melt borosilicate glass. Therefore it hasgreat significance to research the electric power and temperature field and flowing type,which could guide the production for glass, improve the efficiency and quality of glassand development the preparation process about borosilicate micro float glass.Using ANSYS-fluent software which was added MHD module, two borosilicate glassmelting furnaces with15t/d and36t/d were studied study, the analysis of the two modelsliquid glass had similar distribution about electric power and temperature field andflowing type.The simulation result shows that both the electrical power and temperature of glassare first increased and then decreased from the center to the wall in the horizontaldirection and along the depth direction of the furnace. There are both existing internal andexternal circulation. In the melting with15t/d, there are unstable connectivity relationsbetween the external circulation flow of liquid and the throat, which is confirmed bystreak image. Then it is analyzed that these two kinds of furnaces could have design flawsin the current working conditions, and therefore brings the issue of quality of the finishedproduct. Finally, comparing the simulation results of the two models, appropriateoptimization schemes are proposed.