Plasma melting technology and applications

Abstract

A plasma arc melter is a modular high-intensity skull melter capable of rapidly melting a wide variety of materials, both conductive and nonconductive. Although its commercial use to melt and process metals is well known, the method is less well known as a method of melting glass. Extensive research has been conducted by several organizations into the use of skull melting of glass using plasma arcs. This research has shown plasma melting to be a promising technology that can achieve high efficiencies, high temperatures, extreme flexibility, low capital cost, rapid changeovers of glass formulas, and minimal scrap. Plasma melting lends itself to modular melting in which each step of the glass melting process is partitioned into functional modules, which can greatly improve melting efficiency and throughput. Also, plasma arc melting has been shown to be a promising technology for rapidly and inexpensively producing synthetic minerals melted from common commercial oxides. © 2010 Springer-Verlag US.