Glass Futures

Glass Futures is revolutionising the removal of carbon from energy intensive industries. The research and technology, not-for-profit organisation connects the global glass industry with academia to demonstrate disruptive technologies that will decarbonise glass and foundation industries.

Glass Futures is revolutionising the removal of carbon from energy intensive industries. The research and technology, not-for-profit organisation connects the global glass industry with academia to demonstrate disruptive technologies that will decarbonise glass and foundation industries.

Over the last four years Glass Futures, working collaboratively with its members and partners, has undertaken significant research into innovative solutions for decarbonising energy intensive industries.

Glass Futures is current building an industrial scale 30 tonnes per day glass pilot furnace in St Helens, Merseyside to support its existing R&D activities which will provide the capability to trial and demonstrate new hydrogen technologies at an industrially relevant scale for the glass industry.

The furnace will be operational towards the end of 2024 and a range of hydrogen trials are currently scheduled for Q1 2025.  These trials aim to investigate the impact of hydrogen fuels throughout the glass furnace and forehearth, as well as the potential impacts on the furnace refractories and abatement systems.

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In 2020, Glass Futures received £7.1m in funding from the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero (DESNZ, formally BEIS) as part of the Industrial Fuel Switching (IFS) programme, to investigate the potential of alternative low carbon fuels including hydrogen, low cost biofuels and electric boosting within industrial furnaces and kilns to provide the understanding required for glass and other foundation industries to move away from fossil fuels.

A sustainable future can’t be achieved alone and Glass Futures has already been able to attract more than 42 members including glass manufacturers from all sectors of the industry (collectively operating more than 300 glass furnaces) plus suppliers, global brands, industry bodies and a number of universities. Glass Futures is also working closely with government bodies such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the DESNZ, and has helped to secure more than £100 million of grant funding over the last five years for its members and partners.

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Projects on Hydrogen

Learn more about Glass Futures projets on its website
Demonstrating hydrogen in the ceramics sector

Foundation Industries, including Glass, Ceramics, Steel, Cement, Chemicals and Paper share common challenges when it comes to transitioning furnaces and kilns away from natural gas to low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen.  As such, it makes sense for these sectors to collaborate and pool resources and knowledge to develop solutions to these challenges.

Following on from an IFS Phase 1 feasibility project in 2022, which saw Glass Futures fire 100% hydrogen successfully on its combustion test rig, Glass Futures is currently working alongside the Ceramic UK Trade Association and 16 industrial partners, collectively representing all of the 8 sectors of the ceramics industry, to demonstrate the feasibility of firing ceramics kilns with 100% hydrogen-fuels.  As part of this project a bespoke hydrogen-fired ceramics pilot kiln will be installed at the Glass Futures facility in St Helens and used to fire a wide range of ceramics products to assess the impact of hydrogen fuels on product performance and process efficiency.  

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HYESS

As part of the HYDESS project, led by energy supplier E.ON, Glass Futures has evaluated the performance of hydrogen and hydrogen-natural gas blends in steel manufacturing furnaces. Using data carried out within the 350kW Combustion Test Bed pilot furnace in the first phase of research, which also formed the basis of the modelling carried out by the University of Sheffield, the team  applied the method for simulation and testing of hydrogen firing to furnaces at an industrial scale, verifying hydrogen’s effectiveness within industrial steel reheating furances. The project also explored the commercial and engineering needs of generating, transporting and using hydrogen, as well as developing the commercial offer to industrial customers. If successful, this work will lead on to a technical pilot project at E.ON Energy’s Blackburn Meadows biomass power station, with potential for future expansion if the project is taken forward to a full commercial demonstration.

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High Value Manufacturing Catapult Privacy Policy

This website is owned by High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVM Catapult) (as defined in our Terms of Use). HVM Catapult is the controller and is responsible for this website.

1. Scope
Under data protection legislation we have a legal duty to protect any personal information we collect from you. We take data protection seriously and safeguarding your personal information is important to us. We are committed to maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of information provided by you to us. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use that information and what rights you have in relation to the personal data we collect about you. The term ‘personal data’ refers to personally identifiable information about you as defined in data protection legislation.

2. Collection of personal data including email addresses
We may collect personal data about you in a variety of ways, including:

When you engage with us or access or subscribe to any of HVM Catapult’s services;
When you access this website, including if you make an enquiry or sign up to receive our newsletter;
When you engage with us as a potential customer or supplier or use any of the services offered by our organisation;
When you attend a seminar or other event provided by us or in which we are involved;
When you share your details with our staff, or connect with HVM Catapult or our staff on any social media platform; and
From third parties and public sources.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you, including:

Your name, title, date of birth and gender;
Your contact details including postal / billing addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers;
Details of services we have provided to you or which you have supplied to us;
Details of your employer or the organisation you work for and other employment information;
Technical data such as internet protocol (IP) addresses;
Marketing and communications data, including your preferences in receiving marketing from us.

We also collect traffic data and site statistics about the use of our site (for example page hits) but are not readily able to identify individuals from this information. We collect this data through Google Analytics (privacy policy). We do not routinely collect special categories of personal data about you, such as details about your race or ethnic origin and information about your health and/or any disability, nor do we collect information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you do not provide information requested by us from time to time, we may not be able to provide services to you or otherwise fulfil the purpose for which we have requested the information.

3. Use of personal data
We will only use your personal data where the law allows us to do so. HVM Catapult, employees, agents, consultants and subcontractors may use your personal data and disclose it on a confidential basis to third parties for the following purposes:

To send you publications, news and/or information about our people, services or events;
To provide services to you or the organisation you work for;
For disclosure to third party advisors working for us or you on the same matter;
To send you regular updates on issues we think will be of interest to you or matters which we are working on for or with you or your organisation;
For the purpose of employment, partnership or other engagement;
In connection with any tender or other service commissioning by HVM Catapult;
To provide you with access to information and materials;
For marketing purposes and market research;
To administer this website and monitor and audit usage;
To help us improve our website, services and communications to you;
To issue invoices and reminder notices, to raise queries in relation to invoicing and other matters, and to manage accounts, records and collection of payments and debts;
To share information with other third parties who are working with us on services for you;
For fraud prevention and anti-bribery purposes and/or generally for the prevention or detection of crime;
To ensure the safety and security of our people and premises which may include disclosure to relevant third parties;
To process your requests of, and applications to, us;
To verify eligibility for project funding;
For disclosures to our funders and auditors and otherwise demonstrating the impact of our organisation’s receipt of public funding;
For disclosures to or our own legal and other professional advisors and insurers;
For advertising, marketing and public relations, including sending you direct marketing communications;
Providing you with further information about our products and services;
As otherwise required by law or where we are permitted by law to do so;
Where you have given written consent to such use or disclosure; and
For any other purpose for which this information was provided to us or for any purpose related or ancillary to any of the above.
We consider that the processing of personal data as described above is necessary for the legitimate interests of HVM Catapult. In deciding this:

We understand our responsibility to protect your individual interests;
We only use your personal data in ways you would reasonably expect (described above);
We are not using personal data in ways you would find intrusive or which could cause you harm; and
We have considered safeguards to reduce the impact where possible.
We will also process your personal data where it is necessary in order to perform a contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you, or where we need to do so in order to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

You may at any time request that we stop processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes by emailing us as set out further below.

4. Disclosure of your personal data
We may share your personal data within the HVM Catapult and may share your personal data with third parties where we reasonably consider that it is in our legitimate interests to do so and your interests, rights and freedoms do not override our legitimate interests. We will not sell, resell, lease or license your personal data to any third parties. We may share, transfer or disclose your personal data to comply with a legal requirement, for the administration of justice, interacting with anti-fraud databases, to protect your vital interests, to protect the security or integrity of our databases or our website, to take precautions against legal liability, or in the event of a joint venture, collaboration, financing, sale, merger, re-organisation, change of legal form, dissolution or similar event.

We may share, transfer or disclose your personal data to a potential or actual successor to us. In each case we require the relevant third party to take adequate precautions to protect your personal data and to comply with applicable law, though we cannot control the use of your personal data by third parties.

5. Data Security and Retention
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. Please note that our systems are not completely secure and, though we do our best to protect data, the transmission of data to us is done at your own risk.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

6. Your Rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please put your request in writing to: HVM Catapult, The Regus Building, Blythe Valley Business Park, Shirley, B90 8AG or by following the steps set out at 7 below.

You will not normally have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office; the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to deal with your concerns and therefore request that you please contact us in the first instance. Further information about data protection issues and your rights as a data subject can be found at www.ico.org.uk.

7. Unsubscribe
If you do not wish to receive emails from us and want to be removed from our electronic mailing list, please email us at the address given below with “email unsubscribe” in the subject heading. If you also wish to be removed from our postal marketing database, please let us know by emailing us at the address given below with “mail unsubscribe” in the subject heading or writing to us at the address given below.

You may unsubscribe by contacting us.

8. Cookies
In order to collect anonymous data, we may use ‘cookies’ that remain in the cookies file of your browser until they are deleted from your hard drive. For further details please refer to our Cookies Policy.

9. Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

10. Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

These websites are not under our control are we provide these for convenience and information only.

11. WordPress and plugins
Our site is built using WordPress (privacy policy) and includes third-party plugins, some of which do collect personal data. We have taken steps to ensure that we use plugins that are GDPR compliant and have reviewed their privacy policies and settings to ensure your personal data is collected in-line with our over-arching policy above.