New glass could cut our carbon footprint by almost half

The new glass can cut your carbon footprint by almost half and is 10 times more resistant to damage.

Glass production worldwide produces at least 86 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. A new type of glass promises to cut that carbon footprint in half. The invention, called LionGlass and developed by researchers at Penn State, requires significantly less energy to produce and is much more resistant to damage than standard soda-lime silicate glass. The research team recently applied for a patent as a first step in bringing the product to market.

“Our goal is to make glass manufacturing sustainable for the long term,” said John Mauro, Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and lead researcher on the project. "LionGlass eliminates the use of charge materials containing carbon and significantly reduces the melting point of glass."

Soda lime silicate glass, a common glass used in everyday items from windows to glassware, is made by melting three basic materials: quartz sand, soda ash and limestone. Soda ash is sodium carbonate and limestone is calcium carbonate, both of which release carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), a greenhouse gas heat-trapping gas, when melted.

“During glass melting, carbonates decompose into oxides and release carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere,” Mauro said.

But the bulk of CO 2 emissions come from the energy needed to heat furnaces to the high temperatures needed to melt glass. With LionGlass, the melting point is reduced by about 300 to 400 degrees Celsius, Mauro says, resulting in a reduction in energy consumption of about 30% compared to conventional soda-lime glass.

LionGlass is not only less harmful to the environment, but also much stronger than ordinary glass. The researchers said they were surprised to find that the new glass, named after the Pennsylvania state mascot Nittany Lion, was significantly more resistant to cracking than conventional glass.

Some of the team's glass compositions had such high crack resistance that the glass did not crack even under a one-kilogram load from the Vickers diamond indenter. LionGlass is at least 10 times more resistant to cracking than standard soda-lime glass, which cracks under a load of about 0.1 kg of force. The researchers explained that the limits of LionGlass have not yet been found because they have reached the maximum load allowed by the indentation equipment.

“We kept increasing the weight of LionGlass until we reached the maximum load that the equipment allows,” said Nick Clark, a researcher in Mauro's lab. "It just won't crack."

Mauro explained that crack resistance is one of the most important qualities to test in glass because that is how the material eventually fails. Over time, microcracks appear on the surface of the glass, which become weak points. When a piece of glass breaks, it is due to weak spots caused by existing microcracks. He added that glass, which is primarily resistant to microcracks, is especially valuable.

“Damage resistance is a particularly important property of glass,” Mauro said. “Think of all the times we rely on the strength of glass in the automotive and electronics industries, architecture and communications technology such as fiber optic cables. Even in healthcare, vaccines are stored in strong, chemical-resistant glass packaging.”

Mauro hopes LionGlass's increased durability means items made from it can be lighter. Since LionGlass is 10 times more resistant to damage than current glass, it can be significantly thinner.

“We need to be able to reduce the thickness and still get the same level of damage resistance,” Mauro said. “If we have a lighter product, it's even better for the environment because we use less raw materials and less energy to produce it. a win-win situation for everyone."

Mauro notes that the research team is still evaluating the potential of LionGlass. They have filed a patent application for the entire family of glasses, which means that there are many compositions in the LionGlass family, each with its own distinctive properties and potential applications. They are now in the process of exposing various formulations of LionGlass to a variety of chemical environments to study how they react. The results will help the team better understand how LionGlass can be used globally.

“People learned how to make glass over 5,000 years ago, and since then it has been critical to bring modern civilization to where it is today,” Mauro said. “Now we are at a point where we need it to help shape the future as we face global challenges such as environmental issues, renewable energy, energy efficiency, health and urban development. Glass can play a vital role in addressing these issues and we are ready to do our part.”

Source: Hi-Tech News