- October 7, 2021
- Company Info
Let’s Learn about China Glass the Past and Present
So How did Glass Emerge and How did It Evolve?
Speaking of the origin of glass, we know that sand contains silica.
It has a very wonderful characteristic, it will gradually soften and merge together at a high temperature of more than a thousand degrees, and transform into a kind of crystal, which is what we call glass.
More than 24 million years ago, the glass appeared in the deserts of Libya. It was the natural formation of sand at high temperatures. About 10,000 years ago, when someone traveled through this desert, they found this kind of glass and dedicated it to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
The pharaohs were very happy and ordered them to carve it into the shape of a scarab and put it on their own. In the mausoleum, as a sacred instrument.
It was not until 1922 that archaeologists discovered this glass scarab in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in ancient Egypt.
This is the oldest glass discovered by scientists.
A Scarab Glass of Egypt
In the Western world, it was not until the Roman Empire that people began to master glass-making techniques and make glass tools.
During this period, glass windows were made. Many churches in ancient Rome had stained glass windows.
This was the predecessor of modern social glass buildings.
More than 2,000 years ago, the glass began to be introduced into the Han Dynasty, and people began to use glass to decorate doors and windows.
Ancient Rome Stained Glass Windows
How was the earliest flat glass produced?
In the 11th century, Germany invented the “hand blowing method”.
The liquid glass is manually blown into a cylindrical shape, and the glass is cut and flattened while the glass is still hot.
This is the earliest flat glass.
This kind of glass is not flat enough, and it will be polished later, so the glass was very precious at that time and only very rich people could afford it.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the “mechanical blowing method” appeared, which can blow glass liquid into a cylinder with a diameter of 0.5m and a length of 2m.
The area of the glass made is much larger than that of the manual blowing method.
Only 20 years later, the “flat drawing method”, “calendering method”, “slotted vertical drawing method”, “non-slotted vertical drawing method”, and “Asahi method” were invented one after another.
The production technology level of flat glass and The output has been greatly improved.
In addition to being used for residential lighting, the flat glass at that time was also used for cars and mirrors after being polished.
In the late 1950s, the British Pilkington Glass Company announced to the world that the float forming process for flat glass was successfully developed. What is float technology? In the production of glass, the glass liquid is allowed to float on the surface of a certain liquid, so that the produced glass is very flat.
After doing many experiments, people found a kind of liquid at a temperature of 700℃, and the specific gravity is larger than that of glass, which can make the glass liquid float on the surface, that is, metallic tin.
The glass produced in this way is called float glass, which is float glass.
In the 1970s, a production line of the Luoyang Glass Factory was transformed, creating China’s first float glass production line, which is a glass company in our hometown.
China’s First Float Glass Production Line-Luoyang
What is the current status of China Glass?
The construction industry has been booming since the late 1990s, and the application of glass has grown rapidly.
Due to the fragile nature of glass, it has also brought many safety problems to buildings.
In order to solve this problem, we introduced technology to produce tempered glass and laminated glass.
At that time, the glass used in most building doors and windows was mainly single tempered glass.
Single Tempered Glass
Since the heat transfer coefficient of a single piece of glass is generally around 5.7w/m²·k, although it has sound insulation and certain thermal insulation properties, the noise of the city and the severe cold and hot weather make people put forward higher standards for comfort and energy saving. Require.
Because of its significant improvement of the energy-saving index by nearly 50%, insulating glass reached about 2.7w/m²·k, and quickly gained the favor of the market.
Until the 1990s, China glass giants began the research and development of membrane technology, which gave a glimmer of hope to the development of energy-saving glass.
After nearly 10 years of hard work, at the beginning of the 21st century, the maturity of Low-E glass remote steel technology has completely sounded the clarion call for the rapid development of building energy-saving glass.
National energy-saving policies and local energy-saving policies have also revised the energy-saving indicators for building doors, windows and curtain walls, playing an important role in promoting the faster and broader development of building energy-saving glass.
Low-E insulating glass not only puts a more colorful coat on the building, but its energy-saving index is once again raised to about 1.8w/m²·k.
With the continuous update of membrane technology, we have also upgraded from single-silver Low-E to double-silver, and in the era of triple-silver, the heat transfer coefficient has been updated to 1.6w/m²·k again.
More importantly, the sun-shading performance of the glass has been significantly improved, and it has both the functions of heat preservation and heat insulation.
Low-E Architectural Glass Curtain Wall
The energy revolution has never stopped, from traditional hydropower and thermal power generation to nuclear power generation, wind power generation, and solar power generation.
In recent years, the concepts of passive houses and zero-energy buildings have become popular in the country for a while, bringing new opportunities to the development of our glass industry.
With dual cavity Low-E hollow + argon + warm edge, the heat transfer coefficient has reached 0.7W/m²·k in the 1st era.
The past and present of glass also reflect the evolution of human science. It is believed that in the future, for energy-saving requirements, the choice of doors, windows, and curtain walls on the glass will have considerable room for expansion.
Eliter Glass, is an excellent architectural and interior glass provider, manufacturer, and delivers glass to worldwide,
And professional solutions for building glass and decorative glass applications.
Category: Double glazing insulated glass