Recovery and utilization of waste glass

Waste glass is a relatively unpopular industry. Because of its small value, people do not pay much attention to it. There are two main sources of waste glass: one is the leftover materials produced in the processing of glass production enterprises, and the other is the glass bottles and windows produced in people’s lives.

Waste glass is one of the most difficult components in urban garbage. If it is not recycled, it is not conducive to garbage reduction.The cost of collection, transportation and incineration is also very high, and it can not be degraded in the landfill. Even some waste glass contains heavy metals such as zinc and copper, which will pollute the soil and groundwater.

It is reported that it will take 4000 years for glass to be completely degraded. If it is abandoned, it will undoubtedly cause huge waste and pollution.

Through the recycling and utilization of waste glass, not only economic benefits, but also significant environmental benefits.According to statistics, the use of recycled glass and recycled glass can save 10% – 30% of coal and electric energy, reduce air pollution by 20%, and reduce the exhaust gas from mining by 80%. According to the calculation of one ton, recycling one ton of waste glass can save 720 kg of quartz sand, 250 kg of soda ash, 60 kg of feldspar powder, 10 tons of coal and 400 kwh of electricity.The energy saved by a glass bottle is enough to allow a 50 Watt laptop to work continuously for 8 hours. After a ton of waste glass is recycled, 20000 500g wine bottles can be regenerated, which saves 20% of the cost compared with the production using new raw materials.

Glass products can be seen everywhere in the daily life of consumers. At the same time, China produces about 50 million tons of waste glass a year.However, many consumers do not know where the discarded glass products will end up. In fact, the waste glass recovery and treatment methods are mainly divided into: as casting flux, transformation and utilization, furnace recycling, raw material recovery and recycling, etc., to realize the transformation of waste into treasure.

As for the classification of recycled glass, the recycling of waste glass is divided into tempered glass and glass bottle. The tempered glass is divided into pure white and mottled. The glass bottle is divided into high transparency, common transparency and no mottled. The recycling price is different for each grade.After the tempered glass is recycled, it is mainly recycled to reproduce some decoration materials such as imitation marble. Glass bottles are mainly recycled to reproduce bottles and glass fibers.

However, the recycled broken glass can not be used directly after being collected from the recycling site. It must be sorted, broken and classified to have a certain degree of cleanliness.This is because the broken glass collected from the recycling site is often mixed with metal, stone, ceramic, ceramic glass and organic impurities. These impurities, for example, can not be melted well in the furnace, resulting in defects such as sand and stripes.

At the same time, when recycling broken glass, it must be noted that electronic glass, medical glass, lead glass, etc. are not available.At home and abroad, great importance is attached to the recovery and treatment of broken glass. In addition to a complete recovery system, the recovered broken glass must be mechanically sorted and cleaned before entering the furnace. Because only in this way can the stability of product quality be guaranteed.

It is worth noting that glass products mainly include various glass containers, glass bottles, broken glass pieces, glass magnifying glasses, thermos bottles and glass lampshades.