ERIK MUIJSENBERG

Vice President
Glass Service A.S., CZ

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​​​​​Bio​​​

Erik Muijsenberg is a Mechanical Engineering graduate of the University of Eindhoven from the Class of 1990. For the eight years following graduation, he was employed by TNO Glass group in Eindhoven focusing his efforts in furnace modeling and glass melt technology. In 1997 he became the TNO Glass Department leader. In 1998 he became a GLASS SERVICE B.V. Managing Director, the first GLASS SERVICE subsidiary office in Maastricht, the Netherlands. After eleven years he moved to GLASS SERVICE headquarters in Czech Republic to become group Vice President. GLASS SERVICE employs over 100 engineers with offices worldwide including Czechia, Slovakia, Netherlands, Germany, UK, France, USA, China and Japan. Glass Service daughter companies are well known worldwide FlammaTec for combustion systems and FIC UK for Electric melting solutions. In 1997 Erik was awarded the Otto Schott Award. In 2012 he received the Adolf Dietzel Industry Award from the German Glass Society for his contribution to the development and acceptance of glass furnace modeling & optimization in the German glass industry. He was chosen as a Fellow member by the British Glass Society in 2014. Erik is also active Vice Chairman and past Chairman of the Technical Committee 21 – Furnace Design & Operations – of the International Commission on Glass (ICG). As of 2016 Erik became an ICG Steering Committee member. In 2017 he became a Phoenix Award Committee member. Since 2023 Erik is the Vice Chairman of the Phoenix Award Committee. Erik has actively promoted Industry 4.0 smarter model based predictive furnace and forehearth control and CO2 emission reductions to the Glass Industry for over twenty years.

​Presentation ​​

Decarbonization Pathway of the Glass Industry, Challenges, Opportunities for Different Segments and Possible Solutions Regarding Different Energy Inputs

How can we reduce our carbon emissions with new furnace concepts and ideas. New ideas only can be safely developed and tested by using validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) such as GS Glass Furnace Model (GS GFM). It is quite logical that no glass producer will build a new furnace concept melting 100+ tons per day without thorough analysis, calculations and extensive CFD modeling. Lately most glass producers are asking how to reduce carbon emissions with either increasing the amount of electric melting or hydrogen. We have seen in the past such intensive use of CFD modeling when the Oxy-fuel applications emerged. Now with the next generation of large Hybrid (with more than 50% electric boosting) or all Electric melters we can see an increase in demand once again.
The presentation will be divided into five parts:

1. The paper will show some history of (all) electric glass melting.
2. Important for carbon reduction and more electric or hydrogen melting is the availability of more renewable resources to create clean electricity, we will give an update about the world wide developments in this field.
3. We will explain which technologies are more likely for the different segments, eg crystal and table ware, container glass, borosilicate, fiber glass and flat glass.
4. We will also show examples of some already existing large All Electric and large Hybrid melters. Some details of an operating large Hybrid melter will be shown in this presentation.
5. An important and often forgotten area are the forehearths there is a large potential of 70-90% energy and thus carbon emission reduction potential to electrify the FH’s.