A 60,000 sq ft facility to manufacture Cruciform glass furnace regenerators for use by glass manufacturers in North and South America. The proprietary process and technology associated with Cruciform production was provided by Corhart’s international parent company, SEPR/Saint Gobain.
This process is based on known technologies at their existing Cruciform manufacturing facilities located at Le Pontet, France and Brisbane, Australia. Ausenco was charged with the responsibility of merging these technologies with equipment from Italy, Canada, Australia and the United States to create one smoothly functioning production unit.
The process involved everything from receipt of raw materials by rail or truck to packaging and shipping of finished goods. A state-of-the-art facility, the plant incorporates many aspects of sophisticated materials handling systems and programmable logic controllers (PLC’s), all run utilising Siemens S-7, 400 series controllers.
The detailed design included the installation of an arc furnace, cooling tunnel, robot handling system for parts transfer, and process batch system from rail car unloading to furnace feed system. The operation also allowed Corhart to investigate recycling opportunities.