[LunaSea]

Interesting! Does this mean that you could use intermittent energy sources, like solar power, to heat up the float glass oven during the day and it woul keep enough heat during the night so that it could keep running in the morning?

[exar0815]

Float glass is a continuous process, so it runs 24/7 and too much product is recycled into the smelter at the start again (Funnily, glass waste is actually a scarce resource). Getting the process dialed in to emit the desired quality is a long winded thing as far as i know (not involved in the process myself). Also, the heating is done with gas (LNG/CNG/H2) and electric in combination.

[jerven]

Yes, in theory, but your process control would be terrible, thus your product would also be terrible. Unless you invent something very clever.

[BiteCode_dev]

But that makes them superb heat battery, which is under used at the moment to store energy.

[pas]

because of the Carnot cycle, no? it just doesn't make much sense to store energy as heat

[BiteCode_dev]

A lot of energy is spent to heat things anyway.