Since May 2020, Horn Glass has been equipping the country’s first float-glass plant on behalf of Zarafshon Oyna LLC. “We’re extremely proud to be implementing this major project as a turnkey solution,” says Markus Frank, Deputy Director, Glass Plant Technology at Horn Glass. The medium-sized enterprise is in charge of planning, delivering, and commissioning all the technological equipment in the new plant, which will be handed over to the customer on a turnkey basis in the summer of 2021.

Before the float-glass plant begins delivering its planned daily capacity of 250 tons, Horn Glass will have provided an impressive scope of supply, including planning the melting tank, tin bath, and annealing lehr and delivering all the refractory material, the firing system for natural gas and diesel oil, batch and cullet chargers, stirrers, coolers, and measuring and control technology. The company will also supply the tin bath with its associated technological equipment, which includes a shielding gas mixing station. These will be accompanied by the entire annealing lehr and automation system for the hot end. As a Siemens Solution Partner, Horn Glass once again opted for the Simatic PCS 7 process control system, this time Version 9.0. The process automation architecture is designed for maximum flexibility, thanks to a redundant client-server structure. Process optimization is provided by the powerful Simatic PCS 7 Process Historian archive and reporting system and a remote VPN service. The plant sections are integrated in the process structure by three AS 410 single station automation systems. SCALANCE communication modules and Simatic ET 200 I/O modules are used in the network. Functional security for the industrial thermoprocessing technology was implemented using fail-safe Simatic ET 200SP-F I/O modules. The Simatic PCS 7 process control system with its modular system platform is ideal for this plant.

Horn Glass is responsible for all the technological equipment required for the construction of Uzbekistan’s first float-glass plant. Fully automated production is expected to begin in the summer of 2021. The real net output ratio for this project was the turnkey specialist’s highest ever.