Briquetting of waste glass cullet fine particles for energy-saving glass manufacture

Fine particles of glass cullet (fines) arising during glass recycling cannot presently be recycled into glass manufacture due to the potential for bubble formation and foaming. Consolidation of glass fines into briquettes could enable their re-introduction into furnaces, reducing waste and glass melting energies. Properties of briquetted cullet fines and briquette melting behaviour in soda-lime-silica glass batches are presented. Morphology and density of glass fines and briquettes; and briquette mass and mechanical properties as functions of time after formation were analyzed. Compressive strength increases linearly with time after briquette formation. With slight batch modifications to maintain the same final glass composition, up to 15 wt % briquettes were successfully added to a representative container glass batch and melted. Results confirm that briquette batch additions can provide equivalent final glass composition, optical absorption characteristics and redox to briquette-free batches, supporting their industrial uptake.