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Letter to the Editor

PPG Announces $23 Million Oxy-fuel Glass Furnace Upgrade At Pennsylvania Plant

PITTSBURGH -- PPG Industries will invest more than $23 million next year at its Meadville, Pa., glass plant to rebuild a melting tank and install energy-efficient oxygen-fuel firing technology on one of the facility's two float glass production lines.

When the project is completed in mid-2002, the Meadville plant will be only the world's third flat glass production facility to use oxy-fuel firing, which reduces air emissions and natural gas consumption for melting raw materials compared with conventional air-fired furnaces.

According to Dennis V. diDonato, director of flat glass production, oxy-fuel melting technology affords "infinite control" of the combustion process and enhances PPG's ability to produce proprietary high-technology substrate glasses.

"We successfully installed our first oxy-fuel system at the Fresno, Calif., glass plant last year, and it is exceeding expectations in terms of reduced emissions and enhanced efficiencies," diDonato said. "Installing the technology at Meadville will improve environmental efficiency, enhance our ability to produce high-quality PPG proprietary products and increase net throughput."

Oxy-fuel technology uses oxygen instead of air in the combustion process for melting raw materials, and reduces the amount of natural gas needed. As a result, carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions are reduced significantly.

The float glass production line to be converted at Meadville will be shut down in the first quarter of 2002 for about three months during the tank repair, a normal periodic maintenance procedure. When the line is shut down, it will have operated 11.5 years and undergone nearly 100 product changes. The plant's other line is not scheduled for rebuild before 2005.

There will be a limited number of voluntary layoffs during part of the shutdown, diDonato said. The facility has about 400 employees.

The Meadville plant produces the full range of PPG's automotive solar-control float glasses, including Solargreen, Solex, Solextra, GL-20, GL-35 and VistaGray glasses. The oxy-fuel technology will facilitate PPG's ability to produce its value-added products, called high-redox glasses, diDonato said. They are becoming increasingly popular for automotive use because of their ability to reduce solar-heat gain while affording needed visible light transmittance, he added.

Glass produced at Meadville is fabricated into automotive windshields and side and back windows at PPG plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario, Canada, as well as by other automotive glass fabricators.

PPG's Meadville plant began operation in 1968.

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