Can you supply the fans across the whole glass or ceramics flowsheet, or only one duty?
Across the whole flowsheet. We engineer melting-furnace and kiln exhaust, combustion and process air to the burners, quench and tempering air for the toughening line and lehr, spray-dryer air for ceramic body preparation, and the dirty-side dust extraction on batch, milling and material handling. A handful of these duties have been executed on glass and ceramics plant, and the underlying fan engineering is proven across our range. Each fan is engineered to its own gas, temperature and dust load — the very hot furnace exhaust and the clean combustion-air fan are different machines — but they come from one partner, on one engineering convention across the plant.
What is the maximum gas temperature you handle on a furnace or kiln exhaust fan?
Continuous duty up to 600 °C across the envelope, with most furnace and kiln exhaust running 300 to 500 °C after the regenerator or recuperator. Above about 350 °C we fit a shaft cooling disc to keep heat off the bearings, keep the bearings outside the airstream, and add expansion joints for the thermal growth (a 1 m shaft grows about 7 mm from cold to 600 °C). Refractory lining is attested to 600 °C for the hottest furnace duty. The fan is built for your stated gas temperature and excursion case, not a generic rating — which matters on a glass tank that runs continuous for a decade-long campaign.
Glass batch and ceramic body dust is very abrasive. How do you protect the wheel and casing?
Silica sand, batch grit and milled body are among the hardest and sharpest dust in any fan duty, so on the batch-handling, milling and spray-dryer circuits we protect three ways sized to your loading. A rugged radial wheel that sheds dust and resists erosion; chrome-carbide hard-facing on the blade leading edges and high-wear zones; and bolted-in, replaceable wear plates and liners at the scroll throat and inlet with inspection and cleanout doors, so worn parts change out in place. The wear scope is replaceable, not welded in — which is what keeps the fan running between planned overhauls.
Our furnace gas carries fluoride and sulphate, and some circuits drop below the acid dew point. What do you do?
We size the metallurgy and the dew-point margin to your gas analysis. Where the gas carries fluoride, sulphate or boron compounds we specify corrosion-resistant material on the wetted surfaces and step to higher alloys where the loading calls for it. Below the acid dew point (typically 120 to 150 °C, common on the cooler exhaust and dedust circuits) we keep the casing wall above dew point with insulation and heat tracing and select Corten or 316L on the wetted surfaces. The right answer depends on your fluoride, SO₂/SO₃ and moisture, so we engineer it to your gas, not a default.
Can you build a replacement to match our existing glass or kiln fan's duty and footprint?
Yes. We reverse-engineer to the existing duty point (flow, static pressure, gas temperature, density and dust load), bearing centres, inlet/outlet orientation and foundation bolt pattern so the unit drops onto the existing base and ducting — whether it is a furnace-exhaust fan, a kiln fan, a combustion-air fan or a spray-dryer fan. Made to your installation, not a nearest-catalogue substitute. Send the old GA, the nameplate and a curve if you have one, and we match it.
Do you performance-test the fans, and what about AMCA, CE, ATEX and quality certification?
Every fan is performance-tested in-house to the AMCA 210 / ISO 5801 method on our 200 HP VFD test rig, and dynamically balanced to ISO 21940 G6.3 as standard (G2.5 / G1.0 on application). Because the rig runs cold air, hot furnace-gas operation is extrapolated by fan-law correction for density. To be precise: that in-house testing is to the AMCA 210 / ISO 5801 method, not AMCA-certified; CE is self-declared per 2006/42/EC and 2014/35/EU, and ATEX Zone 2/22 is self-declared per 2014/34/EU (Category 3) where the area classification calls for it — those are self-declarations of conformity, not third-party certifications. Our only third-party certification is ISO 9001:2015.
