GB844573A - Method and apparatus for manufacturing glass beads - Google Patents

Abstract

844,573. Glass bead production. CATAPHOTE CORPORATION. Nov. 21, 1958 [Oct. 20, 1958], No. 37598/58. Class 56. Small glass beads are produced by introducing a stream of molten glass into a high velocity substantially transverse carrier gas stream surrounded by generally parallel gases maintained at a temperature above the melting point of the glass, causing the glass to come into intimate contact with the hot gases, separating the glass from the gases, cooling the glass and collecting the cooled glass. As shown, a stream 20 of molten glass emerges from a steel orifice 16 in a tank 10 containing molten glass 14 and falls freely until the acceleration thereof breaks up the glass, as at 22, into fragments. Just below the point 22, a high pressure jet 24 provides. heated air or super-heated steam from a conventional system which travels substantially transverse to the glass stream 20 and further breaks up the glass to droplets 32 which it carries along the path indicated by the arrow P. The jet 24 is surrounded by five equally spaced burners 28 giving high pressure flames 30 parallel to the jet stream. The droplets 32 pass into the flames 30 until they become spherical in shape as at 34, the droplets falling by their weight as their speed becomes less so that they fall out of the zone of the flames and are cooled as they fall into a container 40, the hot gases being removed through a hood 36 by a blower arrangement 38.