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Glass manufacturing is an age-old industry encompassing an extremely diverse range of production techniques. Blowing glass is perhaps the most iconic of these. It exploits the unique viscosity of molten glass by blowing air into the melt, causing it to expand and gradually cool into the desired shape. This is an extremely specialized process where expert glassblowers spool the molten material at the end of a blowpipe before shaping individual components via blow-through. Various platinum products have been developed to take advantage of this viscosity to enhance the underlying melting process in glass furnaces.

Both proprietary glassblowing and commercial-scale float glass manufacturing use melting furnaces to reduce silica sand and additional raw materials to a workable molten s...

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is one of the most robust high-technology solutions for materials characterization and analysis. It is both sensitive and precise, with detection limits as low as the sub-parts per billion (ppb) range for cutting-edge laboratory applications. The specifications of most industrial users are satisfied with the detection and identification of elements at the parts per million (ppm) range. ICP subsequently exceeds the expectations of industrial sample analysis in terms of accuracy and analytical throughput. (more…)

Pliable glass strands form the structural backbone of fiberglass products, reinforcing the polymeric matrix and imparting many of the desired end-product characteristics. These are largely determined by the composition of the glass fibers which are engineered from quarry products and minerals, like regular glass. Subsequently, the conventional challenges of glass working and molten glass handling are just as prevalent in fiberglass production; particularly the challenge of refractory corrosion.

Platinum products have been used to protect refractory elements in furnaces from the corrosive behavior of molten glass in both general glass manufacturing and fiberglass production for years. Molten glass attacks refractories via two basic processes: a chemical interaction at the interfac...