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Is glass coming to a concrete near you?

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Is glass coming to a concrete near you?

Is glass coming to a concrete near you?

As cities across the United States struggle with the question of glass recycling, some companies are envisioning a new future for old bottles and jars. Google and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation teamed up in 2010 to examine “circular economies.” A circular economy is one in which materials are used and re-used in ways that limit the need for truly raw materials.

One area that the MacArthur Foundation examined was concrete. Concrete is a common building material, but it has some environmental downsides. Cement – a primary component of concrete – generates a lot of CO2 during its production. Various concrete mixtures can also contain toxic heavy metals like cadmium, arsenic and lead. These toxic inclusions come from fly ash and slag, which are sometimes used in concrete mixtures as a substitute for some of the cement.

Ground glass is being considered as a substitute for fly ash, which is in short supply. Fly ash is a residue generated by coal-fired power plants. No one’s building coal fired power plants today, and as more plants convert to natural gas, the supply of fly ash dwindles further. At the same time, the demand for concrete is rising, so finding an acceptable substitute for fly ash is a priority.

Substituting glass for fly ash could solve a couple of problems. First, it could create a viable market for recycled glass. That’s big because so many cities struggle with glass recycling, and it could remove some of the 8 million tons of container glass from US landfills every year. Second, it could reduce the demand for cement, which could in turn reduce cement-related carbon emissions significantly. Each ton of cement that’s produced releases a ton of carbon into the atmosphere.

Right now, using glass powder (called pozzolan) in place of fly ash would increase the price of concrete slightly – less than 5% – but it would decrease the carbon footprint of concrete to about 10% of its current size by reducing demand for cement. It would also eliminate the need to import fly ash from other places, like China and South America. The Foundation estimates that a pozzolan plant needs about 40,000 tons of container glass each year to keep up with the demand for ground glass, and multiple pozzolan plants would be needed to meet the annual demand for concrete. That’s still significantly less than the amount of glass that gets recycled, but concrete production offers a positive market for recycled glass – something that has so far been hard to come by.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Sparkle Motion, via Flickr.com

Smog-eating glass coating could freshen cities

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Smog-eating glass coating could freshen cities

Smog-eating glass coating could freshen cities

Globally, scientists are concerned with the increase in carbon in the atmosphere as the result of human activity. As they look for ways to reduce greenhouse gases, a new – and somewhat fanciful – approach to cleaning up the atmosphere is emerging. Specially coated smog-eating glass could help reduce carbon in the air around buildings in urban areas.

The notion of a smog-eating coating isn’t fanciful. It exists today. The fanciful part of this equation is the idea that the coated glass could be attached to a 3-mile-high building. Someday. If materials engineering company Arconic has its very futuristic way. Arconic recently offered up its homage to The Jetsons, envisioning what a futuristic building might include in 2062 – 100 years after The Jetsons first hit the airwaves. But could a 3-mile high building be built? What would it look like?

The tallest building in the world currently is Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It checks in at 2,717 feet – just a hair over ½ mile high. Today’s tallest buildings test the limits of current construction methods and materials, so a 3-mile tall building would require more than just a few new design ideas.

The smog-eating coating isn’t one of them, though. Arconic’s hydrophilic Eco-Clean coating exists today and has been on the market since 2011. It attracts pollutants with the help of light and water vapor. Once on the building’s surface, the offending particles are washed to the ground. A large-scale implementation may be one approach to cleaning up the urban landscape.

The company has some other ideas about how to get closer to the 3-mile tower, including multi-functional windows and 3-D printing. That’s right – the company doesn’t discount the possibility of 3-D printing a building – or at least parts of it – and buildings that generate most or all of their own energy. Their futuristic vision is based on technologies that are either available today or are in development.

One coating technology that’s available today is Glassprimer™ glass paint. Glassprimer™ glass paint is specially engineered to bond permanently to glass. It can be used in interior or exterior applications, and can be tinted to match virtually any palette from any major paint manufacturer. In addition to decorative uses, the paint can be used to help control light and heat.

GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Jay Peeples, via Flickr.com

BIPV and photovoltaic glass

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BIPV and photovoltaic glass

BIPV and photovoltaic glass

Even if you’ve never heard the term BIPV, you’ll probably understand its impact. Building-integrated photovoltaics are an up-and-coming element of new building construction. Its companion term – building-applied photovoltaics (BAPV) – is used in relation to existing construction. Together they encompass a wide range of glass and other components that replace conventional construction materials that you’d normally find in the building envelope.

BIPV are made for roof, façade and skylight installations. They offer the best economic advantage when they’re installed as part of initial construction. Increasingly, commercial buildings are being designed with energy-efficiency and sustainability in mind. In some cases, a BIPV installation is required by local building codes. In other cases, building owners who are seeking LEED certification use BIPV to help meet certification requirements.

As glass coatings and other technological improvements have been developed, the cost of incorporating BIPV has fallen. In addition, their efficiency has increased, which makes them more attractive from an operational perspective.

BAPV components are also attractive. Many older buildings are being retrofitted with high-efficiency photovoltaics to support local power consumption, reduce the cost of operation, or generate income. Energy-efficient retrofits also make commercial spaces more attractive, and may allow building owners to claim tax credits or rebates.

BIPV is expected to play a major role in European countries where Zero Energy Building (ZEB) targets are in place. Photovoltaic adoption in commercial buildings in the United States has lagged, however. The implementation of zero net-energy buildings is likely to gain traction here as power companies attempt to improve the efficiency of their existing plants.

Novel glass coatings and new photovoltaic designs are likely to increase the efficiency of BIPV components. That will reduce the cost for initial installation, as well as the cost of retrofitting existing construction. In addition, coatings like Glassprimer™ glass paint can also help reduce heat buildup while still permitting the transmission of visible light.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Tai Viinikka , via Flickr.com

New Arena Features Unusual Glass Doors

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New Arena Features Unusual Glass Doors

New Arena Features Unusual Glass Doors

If you’re an NBA fan, you’ll want to take special notice of some unusual glass doors that help create the façade of the new Sacramento Kings Golden 1 Center. The new arena opened at the beginning of the 2016-17 NBA season.

When you think of “glass doors,” you think of doors that are vertically hinged and open inward or outward, depending upon which side of the door you’re on. You might also envision a “garage-door” style door – one that is segmented, and travels on a track. It’s stored overhead when the door is open and is positioned vertically when the door is closed.

And then there are the doors at the Golden 1 Center. They’re neither of those kind of glass doors, although they’re closer to the garage door than the standard commercial hinged door. They lean at a vertical angle of 11 degrees, in part to minimize reflections from the California sun.

The doors, designed by Schweiss Doors of Hector, MN, are bifold doors, but they’re hinged horizontally instead of vertically. The doors are opened by means of a strap-and-motor system that lift each of the 14-ton doors and fold them neatly overhead, with the folded doors forming a canopy of sorts over five doorways, which are each about 30′ wide.

The five doorways are clustered together in one corner of the building and provide ample access to the arena. The arena also features conventional doors at the base. Fans can enter and exit the building at about three times the rate of a conventional gate-keeping design. When the doors are closed, they work as “window walls” allowing light into the interior. The primary purpose of the Schweiss doors is to add natural cooling to the building. They’re oriented to take advantage of natural wind movement.

There has been talk of holding games with the doors open, and the team believes it can control the temperature and humidity in the building enough to make that a reality. The team says it will hold practices and exhibition games with the doors open in order to collect data and monitor environmental conditions inside the building. In addition, the building can host concerts and other live performance events with the doors open to both increase the size of the audience and to allow guests to take advantage of the plaza that surrounds the arena.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: CommScope, via Flickr.com

Cities struggle to cope with glass recycling

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Cities struggle to cope with glass recycling

Cities struggle to cope with glass recycling

If you want to know about the status of glass recycling in the United States, some quick Internet searching will allow you to create a fairly long list of municipalities that have dumped curbside recycling of glass. Glass is easily one of the most recyclable materials, and it costs less to recycle glass than it does to make new glass, so what’s the trouble with glass recycling?

The cost of transporting, sorting and storing recyclable glass adds a layer of complexity that most municipalities don’t want to (or can’t) deal with. Glass is heavy, which means it’s expensive to transport, and there is more supply than demand for glass, recycled glass and crushed glass, called cullet.

Anchorage, AK is one municipality that’s trying to change the outcome for much of the city’s glass containers. According to city workers, Anchorage – a city of just about 300,000 people – collects about 1,200 tons of glass continers each year. Like many other cities, they don’t allow curbside collection of glass. Anchorage doesn’t have a local reclamation facility, so it bundles its recyclables and sends them off to Washington State. Adding glass into the mix would add significant weight, which would increase transportation costs and diminish already-thin returns.

Instead, glass is collected in three aggregating facilities around the city and retained. The State of Alaska has recently permitted construction projects to use 100% crushed glass as backfill on water and sewer pipe projects, and it can be used as a backfill component for other construction projects. In addition, finely crushed glass can be used like sand to create traction on snow-covered walkways and parking lots.

Other cities like Knoxville, TN have just eliminated glass from their single-stream curbside recycling programs. According to city officials, glass collection is logistically difficult and much of the collected glass ends up being broken at their facility. Broken glass is hard to handle and can damage the sorting equipment that’s the backbone of a single-stream recycling program. In addition, it’s virtually impossible to find buyers for mixed-color glass.

Roswell, GA has agreed to pay its curbside collector an additional $10,000 per month for the next six months to continue picking up container glass. For many cities, glass recycling has gone from being a revenue stream to being an expense. It’s one they’re unlikely to bear for very long.

Cities continue to cope with the demand by residents that glass be included in recycling programs, even when it’s difficult to find buyers for the resulting product. Many cities are crushing the glass to use it as landfill cover. Others are simply landfilling the product to free storage space at their reclamation facilities. A growing number of cities are simply not accepting glass into their recycling streams at all.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: josef stuefer, via Flickr.com

Steuben Glass Comes Home

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Steuben Glass Comes Home

Steuben Glass Comes Home

One of the world’s premier name in fine glass is coming back home. Corning recently announced that it has reacquired Steuben Glass, after having sold the company in 2008. The company was founded in 1903 and initially acquired by Corning Glass Works in 1918. Three years after the company’s sale to Schottenstein Stores, Schottenstein announced that it was closing the Steuben factory and Manhattan store.

But that’s not the end of the Steuben story. In 2014, The Corning Museum of Glass announced that it would work with local producers to reproduce Steuben designs using both lead-free and leaded glass. Proceeds from the sales benefit educational programs produced by The Corning Museum.

Corning’s first ownership of the brand didn’t end well. The company decided to sell the Steuben division after years of declining sales. To celebrate the return of Steuben, the Corning Museum has developed a new Steuben display featuring some of the collection’s most exquisite pieces, and has stocked the museum’s store with Steuben glass gifts.

For decades, Steuben glass was the go-to gift for royalty, popes and presidents. Known for their sophisticated and elaborate designs, Steuben glass pieces are often considered “museum-quality” right out of the box!
Corning does not intend to reopen the former Steuben factory. Instead, pieces will be made by a number of producers in and around Corning, NY.

Steuben pieces capture the elegance of glass as a decorative medium. While many of the currently available Steubens are contemporary designs, Corning is also producing some of the company’s classic designs.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Victoria Pickering, via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – EU Headquarters

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Iconic Glass Structures – EU Headquarters

Iconic Glass Structures – EU Headquarters

The new European Union Headquarters, located in Brussels, Belgium, is getting ready to host European leaders for the first time. The building, which was originally scheduled to open in 2012, has been beset by delays and cost overruns that pushed the building’s opening back to 2017.

The building is known as The Europa, and is made from a mixture of old and new architecture. Belgium donated a building known as the Residence Palace. Originally built in 1927 as apartments, the building was purchased by the Belgian government and renovated into office space. The donated building was also used by Nazi forces in World War II. The building was incorporated into the new Europa design because it holds a historical designation and could not be razed.

The Residence Palace serves as an anchor for a new glass atrium that joins the building. The new atrium contains 3,750 windows of varying sizes that have been framed with recycled oak from building demolition sites in each of the 28 member states. At 11 stories, the new construction actually exceeds the height of the Residence Palace.

The atrium contains a large lantern structure that glows in the dark, thanks to reflective strips that catch low-energy spotlights focused on it. The “lantern” as it is known, is not simply something to look at. It expands the amount of available meeting space in the building for EU members.

The interior of the building is exceptionally colorful, but designers were careful to avoid any colors or patterns that could be interpreted as supporting one member over another, or that resemble any member’s flag or national identity symbols.

Another new addition to the Europa is a round table where EU leaders will meet. The current meeting table has sharp angles that sometimes prevent members from seeing who is talking. The members must sometimes rely on video screens to see who is speaking.

Members will begin using the building in January, and the site will host the first leaders’ summit in March.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Samyn Partners and Associates

Lehigh Researchers Make Single Glass Crystal

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Lehigh Researchers Make Single Glass Crystal

Lehigh Researchers Make Single Glass Crystal

If you know anything about glass, you know that it’s a unique material. Glass is formed in a liquid state, and as it cools, it hardens. Unlike other solid materials, glass doesn’t form a standard crystalline structure. For reasons that aren’t clearly understood, glass cools and hardens before it can achieve the hallmark crystal lattice that defines most solids.

Another thing about glass is that once it is formed from raw materials, it can be reheated to the point of melting and reformed into any other state. It takes less heat to melt glass than it does to make glass from raw materials, so the melting point of glass is critical to a discovery by researchers at Lehigh University.

Single crystals are key to the workings of solar cells. For the solar cells to move energy efficiently, they rely on single crystals that have been ordered in a particular way. Single crystals can manage both light and heat, but as it turns out, it’s hard to manufacture single crystals of glass.

Lehigh researchers have discovered a manufacturing technique that allows them to turn solid glass into single crystals without melting the glass. Being able to create single crystals reliably and at a relatively low cost could enable the development of more efficient, less expensive solar cells. Single crystals are also useful in superconductors. In addition to being able to create single crystals, the production technique allows the researchers to create complex or customized shapes using single crystals.

The researchers used a laser beam to “write” single crystals by heating glass to a temperature that is too low to melt the glass, but high enough to allow crystallization. Laser fabrication allows very precise ordering of single crystals and could significantly lower the cost and speed production of solar cells.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Solar Giga, via Flickr.com

Glass history may need a rewrite

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Glass history may need a rewrite

Glass history may need a rewrite

The accepted history of glass says that glassmaking first arose in Mesopotamia about 3,600 years ago. But researchers from Harvard University and Cranfield University in England want the world to know something. There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that glassmaking originated in Egypt, and that the earliest Mesopotamian glasses were probably just cheap copies.

The widely accepted theory about the origin of glass originates from archaeological finds at an ancient Mesopotamian site known as Nuzi. The Nuzi site yielded a number of glass artifacts, including glass jewelry and containers.

But the Nuzi site, which is in modern-day Iran, yielded artifacts that come from a broad time span. New testing shows that the earliest artifacts are only about 3,400 years old, based on the age of the sediment they were found in. Some of the Nuzi artifacts are relatively new, dating only to the 1800’s.

The trouble with the new timeline is that the artifacts aren’t quite as old as scientists had previously thought. In addition, the glass objects in Mesopotamia are relatively simple and feature one predominant color: blue. The pieces are crude in comparison to glasses being made in Egypt around the same time.

By contrast, Egyptian glass was of much higher quality and was more sophisticated, both in design and in the range of colors and objects discovered. Since glassmaking is a craft, the sophistication of the work is an indication of the length of time the craft has been practiced.

The simplicity of the artifacts and Nuzi, when compared to the sophistication of the earliest glass pieces from Egypt suggest to the researchers that glass first emerged as a craft in Egypt, and the Mesopotamian discoveries at Nuzi were simple, less sophisticated copies of glass that was being created in Egypt.

The researchers say that more work and analysis needs to be done to determine the true and authoritative story on the origin of glass, and that the answer to that question may come by more in-depth analysis of the earliest glass works.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: smallbrainfield, via Flickr.com

Glass Yankee Candle products recalled

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Glass Yankee Candle products recalled

Glass Yankee Candle products recalled

Yankee Candles is voluntarily recalling about 31,000 scented candles in square glass holders that the company sold between September 2016 and November 2016. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which investigated consumer complaints regarding the product, lit candles can generate enough heat to crack the glass holders.

The CPSC received reports of 16 candleholders that broke while the candle was lit. The broken candleholders could cause a laceration injury, but the CPSC was not aware of any injuries that had occurred due to the defect.

Yankee Candle encourages consumers who purchased the company’s Luminous Collection candles to return the product (in any condition) to the company for a full refund. The scented candles were produced in six fragrances, including Sea Salt and Coral, Blackberry and Sage, Apple Blossom and Melon, Sugarcane and Honey, Pine and Sandalwood, and Cinnamon and Cedar. The recalled products originally retailed for $35.

Glass that is intended for use around heat sources should be tempered for safety. Tempered glass can resist heat damage up to about 400°. Glass has become a very popular decorating material. Tempering the glass can not only help the glass resist sudden or significant changes in temperature, it can also help the glass to absorb impacts better without shattering.

If you intend to use glass in large volumes to decorate your home – as a wall covering or countertop material – consult with a local glass shop before installing plate glass. A glass shop can provide custom fit, tempered glass for use in your home. Tempered glass cannot be cut once it has been heat-treated, so it must be fit prior to heat treatment.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Consumer Product Safety Commission/Yankee Candle