Boosting productivity in a glass making plant

ARI Armaturen UK has recently supplied manual isolation, flow control and safety valves for gas mixing on a float line glass-making project in Russia, in partnership with Air Products

Air Products, one of the world's leading suppliers of industrial gases and equipment, was approached by the Russian float line glass making plant to provide the hydrogen and nitrogen gas mixing system that creates a protective atmosphere over the sheet glass during production.

Various valves are crucial for this system to work effectively and ARI supplied its manual isolation, flow control and safety solenoid valves for use in the gaseous nitrogen and hydrogen environment.

On this project, ARI valves are essential for the "always on" gas mixing system within float line glass making and help to ensure that downtime is kept to a minimum, preventing the ceasing of furnace operations and loss of production.

Since the new system has been in operation there have been no unplanned shutdowns, which has led to significant commercial improvements.

Commenting on the successful application of the ARI valve products, Mike Hevey, segment manager, Metals and Glass Europe at Air Products said, "It was essential to our clients in Russia that any equipment we supplied was compliant with the Russian approval requirements.

ARI valves not only passed this approval but the valves supplied were extremely cost competitive whilst being technically sound.

We are very happy with the results".

Tony Harrison, operations manager at the ARI-Armaturen UK headquarters in Tewkesbury, said, "The valves used in this application had to be reliable, safe and extremely resistant as they are being used in such a tough environment.

Our expertise and experience in this field means that we were able to supply such specialists valves and guarantee excellent results".

for any future applications, Mike commented: "With ARI Armaturen we have now created a system that is at the forefront of technology and will act as a vehicle of next generation large scale mixing systems of this kind into the glass industry".

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