ABSTRACT
Sri Lanka glass industry is mainly engaged in glass container production from the year of Second World War. On average, energy cost in the glass industry account for around 14% of total glass production cost. Energy efficiency improvement is an important way to reduce these costs and to increase predictable earnings, especially in times of high energy price volatility. The Glass Company selected for this study is the leader in container glass manufacturing in Sri Lanka, mainly facing at high energy cost as other countries in the world.This research is focused on finding a method of saving energy consumption of annealing lehr in the glass printing section. Annealing is a process specific to glass manufacturing. In glass decoration, special annealing process is carried out to adhere the print permanently to the glass. Therefore, the study is focused to finding the reasons to high-energy consumption of decorating lehr in Company. Using theoretical calculation, it was found that, cooling rate can be changed slightly for different types of bottles. Temperature profile adjustments for existing cooling rate in decorating lehr was done for different types of bottles based on theoretical calculations. According to the trial run results it was shown that production rate of printed bottles can be increased by adjusting temperature profile. Thereby, some energy can be saved (LP gas) per kg of glass.
