Address:
Glafo, Box 5157,
SE-350 05 Växjö
SWEDEN

Visitor's address:
Vejdes plats 3

Tel: +46 10 516 63 50
E-mail: info@glafo.se

You find a map at the
"about Glafo" page.

IDENTIFICATION AND ELIMINATION OF GLASS CERAMICS WHEN RECYCLING GLASS

The goal is to be able to identify and separate glass ceramics in collected glass in order to provide high quality recycle glass.

Background
In principle glass can be recycled an unlimited number of times without it losing its properties. Recycling is extremely important for many reasons. It preserves natural resources and reduces energy requirements, which in turn reduces the emission of greenhouse gases.

In Sweden, over 95% of used packaging glass is collected and recycled. In order to use the collected glass for producing new products, it must be of high quality, i.e. carefully sorted.

Impurities in the form of porcelain, ceramics and glass ceramics cause the glass manufacturers production problems. Furthermore, the new products can have defects in the form of stones or knots (see figure), which means that they must be rejected.


Knot in the wall of a bottle caused by glass ceramics.

The amount of glass ceramics in collected glass has increased recently. This causes problems at the sorting stations.

Glass ceramics can either be transparent or opaque, and they look very much like glass. However, they have completely different properties to glass.

Various extra tools are required at the sorting stations in order to separate glass ceramics that have been wrongly placed on collection. In cooperation with industry, Glafo is going to, among other things, investigate the types of glass ceramic present in the Swedish market, the sorting equipment that is in place to separate them from the process (on-line and off-line) as well as provide glass technology training for the technical personnel at sorting stations.


CURRENT PROJECTS