Islamic Glass in the Making

The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the history of Islamic glassmaking to trace the developments in the production, trade and consumption of vitreous materials between the eighth and twelfth centuries and to separate the norm from the exception. It proposes compositional discriminants to distinguish regional production groups, and provides insights into the organisation of the glass industry and commerce during the early Islamic period. The interdisciplinary approach leads to a holistic understanding of the development of Islamic glass; assemblages from the early Islamic period in Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, Greater Syria and Iberia are evaluated, and placed in the larger geopolitical context. In doing so, this book fills a gap in the present literature and advances a large-scale approach to the history of Islamic glass.

A joint pricing and network design model for a closed-loop supply chain under disruption (Glass Industry)

Closed-loop supply chains have attracted more attention by researchers and practitioners due to strong government regulations, environmental issues, social responsibilities and natural resource constraints over past few years. This paper presents a mixed-integer linear programming model to design a closed-loop supply chain network and optimizing pricing policies under random disruption. Reusing the returned products is applied as a resilience strategy to cope with the waste of energy and improving supply efficiency. Moreover, it is necessary to find the optimal prices for both final and returned products. Therefore, the model is formulated based on demand function and it maximizes total supply chain’s profit. Finally, its application is explored through using the real data of an industrial company in glass industry.

Simulation and Techno-Economic Analysis of a Power-to-Hydrogen Process for Oxyfuel Glass Melting

As an energy-intensive industry sector, the glass industry is strongly affected by the increasingly stringent climate protection targets. As established combustion-based production systems ensure high process stability and glass quality, an immediate switch to low greenhouse gas emission processes is difficult. To approach these challenges, this work investigates a step-by-step integration of a Power-to-Hydrogen concept into established oxyfuel glass melting processes using a simulation approach. This is complemented by a case study for economic analysis on a selected German glass industry site by simulating the power production of a nearby renewable energy park and subsequent optimization of the power-to-hydrogen plant performance and capacities. The results of this study indicate, that the proposed system can reduce specific carbon dioxide emissions by up to 60 %, while increasing specific energy demand by a maximum of 25 %. Investigations of the impact of altered combustion and furnace properties like adiabatic flame temperature (+25 °C), temperature efficiency (Δξ = −0.003) and heat capacity flow ratio (ΔzHL = −0.009) indicate that pure hydrogen-oxygen combustion has less impact on melting properties than assumed so far. Within the case study, high CO2 abatement costs of 295 €/t CO2-eq. were determined. This is mainly due to the insufficient performance of renewable energy sources. The correlations between process scaling and economic parameters presented in this study show promising potential for further economic optimization of the proposed energy system in the future.

Bell e net vidre. Producción, distribución y consumo de vidrio en el reino de Valencia durante la Baja Edad Media

El presente artículo analiza el desarrollo de la industria vidriera valenciana entre los siglos XIII y XV. Para ello se recurre a un centenar de documentos de carácter notarial, normativo, judicial y fiscal, procedentes de distintos archivos valencianos. Estos permiten estudiar la localización de los hornos de vidrio en el reino de Valencia y las formas de trabajo de los vidrieros, así como los procesos de distribución y los sistemas de venta del vidrio doméstico. Finalmente, se aborda la demanda y el consumo de estos bienes y sus usos en las viviendas de diferentes sectores sociales de la época. Todo ello invita a reconsiderar la relevancia de esta industria en el reino de Valencia, mucho menos estudiada que sus homólogas catalanas y mallorquinas, en el contexto de la Corona de Aragón y del Mediterráneo noroccidental durante la Baja Edad Media. This essay analyses the development of the Valencian glass industry between the 13th and the 15th centuries. For this purpose, it turns to around a hundred documents from notarial, normative, legal and tax records, placed in various Valencian archives. These reveal the location of glass furnaces in the kingdom of Valencia and the glass-makers’ activities, as well as the sale and distribution systems of domestic glass. Finally, it addresses the demand and consumption of these goods and their usage within the dwellings of various social strata of the period. This all leads to reconsider the relevance of this industry in the kingdom of Valencia, far less studied than its counterparts from Catalonia and Majorca, in the context of the Crown of Aragon and the north-western Mediterranean during the later middle ages.

Reduction of Lead and Antimony Ions from the Crystal Glass Wastewaters Utilising Adsorption

The presented research examined five adsorbents, i.e., zeolite 4A, a mixture of three zeolites (4A, 13X, and ZSM-5), natural zeolite (tuff), activated carbon, and peat, and their potential capability for removal of exceeded ions of lead (Pb), antimony (Sb), sulphates (SO42−), and fluorides (F−) from real wastewater generated in the crystal glass industry, which was previously treated in-situ by flocculation, with the aim to attain the statutory values for discharge into watercourses or possible recycling. The screening experiment evidenced that the tuff was the most suitable adsorbent for the reduction of Pb (93.8%) and F− (98.1%). It also lowered wastewater’s pH sufficiently from 9.6 to 7.8, although it was less appropriate for the reduction of Sb (66.7%) as compared to activated carbon (96.7%) or peat (99.9%). By adjusting the pH of the initial wastewater to pH 5, its adsorption capacity even enlarged. Results from the tuff-filled column experiment revealed reduction of Pb up to 97%, Sb up to 80%, and F− up to 96%, depending on the velocity flow, and thus it could be used for post-treatment (and recycling) of wastewaters from the crystal glass industry. Moreover, the system showed an explicit buffering capacity, but negligible reduction of the SO42−.

Remembering Oleksandr Pronin: the Stained Glass Art Laboratory of KSADA in 1980–2000s

The material covers the years of creative life of a famous Ukrainian artist-monumentalist, O. Pronin (1934–2002), associated with his leadership of the Department of Monumental Painting of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts and the development of stained glass as a technique and a form of monumental and decorative art in education. The author focuses on the formation of a school of artistic stained glass in Kharkiv, the founders of which were professors Oleksandr Pronin and his wife Galyna Tishchenko. The article has some features of autobiography and is presented in the form of memoirs about the activities of the stained glass workshop of KSADA – Kharkiv Art and Industry Institute, and life of the author and the main character of the story, O. Pronin, and his students, around this workshop. These are the times of formation of the laboratory, certain stages of gaining experience in the stained glass industry, analysis of works of art and the spread of stained glass art through the work of the head of the department and laboratory and his many followers. Documentary and illustrative materials on the activities of the stained glass workshop, which was created by O. Pronin in 1967 and is still developing thanks to the efforts and activities of the author of the article, who is a direct student and a follower of the master, mention significant for Kharkiv and all Ukraine monumental art projects, behind which O. Pronin stood as the author or leader. The facts and memoirs presented by the author of the article have historical and scientific value, since the author himself took part in the creation of the stained glass laboratory of KSADA as its head. Although the emphasis is made on the 1980–2000s, which was the period of the heyday of the laboratory, the author also cites the modern works of O. Pronin’s and his own students, showing the continuity of the traditions in the Kharkiv school of stained glass.

Bootstrap Aggregation Technique for Evaluating the Significance of Manufacturing Process Parameters in the Glass Industry

The article presents the application of the bootstrap aggregation technique to create a set of artificial neural networks (multilayer perceptron). The task of the set of neural networks is to predict the number of defective products on the basis of values of manufacturing process parameters, and to determine how the manufacturing process parameters affect the prediction result. For this purpose, four methods of determining the significance of the manufacturing process parameters have been proposed. These methods are based on the analysis of connection weights between neurons and the examination of prediction error generated by neural networks. The proposed methods take into account the fact that not a single neural network is used, but the set of networks. The article presents the research methodology as well as the results obtained for real data that come from a glassworks company and concern a production process of glass packaging. As a result of the research, it was found that it is justified to use a set of neural networks to predict the number of defective products in the glass industry, and besides, the significance of the manufacturing process parameters in the glassworks company was established using the developed set of neural networks.