WORKSHOP SURVEY
2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
DOE/GMIC GLASS WORKSHOP AND REVIEW
November 2, 2006
Columbus, Ohlo
Participant Comments
I. SUBMERGED COMBUSTION MELTING
What barriers remain for this technology?

Fining: Glass quality. Fining. Glass quality unknowns, experience with operation.
Need a technology for refining. Need a technology for improving glass quality
Affordable, defect free connection for glass flow between SCM and a
refining/conditioning chamber prior to forming. Refining/. Refining or delivery to a
melter for further refining. May need lot of refining or developing. Ultimately, this
technology has to be coupled with various refining and conditioning technologies
(new or enhanced existing) in order to supply glass to current glass product forming
operations. Fining, To develop refining technologies to achieve better quality. What is
the potential system(s) for refining?

Fining Agents: Retention of fining agents in the glass, i.e., SO3, CL, F. How do
particulates compare to present process emissions? Retention/capture and return of
boron, fluorine and other volatiles, water combining chemicals in glass composition

Conditioning - Conditioning to produce a commercial saleable glass.

Scale up - proof of tonnage capacity. . Maximum throughput possible? Scale up to
production scale of 150-200 T/D. Scale-up to 100 T/D plus commercial glass. scaleup. Scale up to industrial levels. Need to keep understanding the fundamentals to help
drive for scale (specific to products). Continuous operation.

Taking to Market - “Technology insertion” pathway not defined very well, but seems
to be pursuing several. What glass should be first? Far from knowing how to control
in a plant. Need to determine the capital cost savings projected. This technology has in
my opinion the greatest possibility to be developed into a commercially viable
process.


Operational stability and consistency. Large number of seeds for primary batch
melting; Turn down of operation.

Energy Implications: Demonstration of energy savings. Energy recovery from bare
metal walls.

Need process research for speed of melting and draw rates for furnace.

SCM pilot furnace is based on Fluent model. All CFD assumes lot of boundary
conditions in solving the problem. So until we run experiments, there is no guarantee
that it will work as planned.

Recrystalization in the frozen layer. Stability (preventing entrainment) of frozen glass.

Environmental – is this a new source and how will EPA rule on this technology?
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review

Bubbles, stones, conditioning along with a commercialization plan. Lack of future
DOE funding. Batch preheating options.

To evaluate the quality achievable without added equipment.

Economic feasibility yet to be demonstrated.
What near and long term opportunities and markets are there for this technology?

Excellent melter for smaller applications requiring often chemistry/batch change.

Scrap remelting. Solid waste vitrification to produce value added products.

Is there an improvement in retention of volatile components such as B2O3, Se, Na, K,
etc. Has gaseous content of product been compared to in situ samples from
consortium companies?

Near term – industries that do not require high quality like sodium silicate.

Large potential.

Near term – low volume glass products; quality will be key driver. Companies will
need to tie this to their refining technology. Frits would be an ideal starting place.
Long-term – have to get through barriers above.

Seem to be chasing right rabbits.

Scrap melting for fiberglass/low cost opportunity.

Fiber glass. Water glass.

Many – all sectors, except maybe float


Performing alkali silicates in a melt prior to hydrolyzation of meta–di and tri silicate
water glass. Recycling high resin textile fiber glass waste.
Just about any glass product would use this technology. Start and stop capability –
ability to change compositions relatively quickly.

Future is very good. Our company itself is interested in having one in the near future.

Fiber. Ash vitrification.

Cost effective way to add capacity to glass container plants that require additional
tons, specialty type containers. A cost effective way to install and operate a “color
change” melter and machine line.


Near term will be “lower quality” glasses such as sodium silicate or cullet
manufacturing. Depending on success of fining efforts above, can go from lower
tonnage to larger tonnage (float glass units and high quality (LCD) glass).
Specialty glasses near term. Fiber glass – container glass, etc. long term.

Near term is the vitrification of waste stream to produce non-hazardous products.
Also a viable process for fiberglass waste recycling and long term fiberglass
production.

Specialty glasses, making cullet to be remelted, nuclear waste.

Scrap glass melting – as is. Yes market exists especially if more post-consumer cullet
becomes available.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
For products with lower quality constraints (e.g., insulation glass fiber). Treatment of
waste/recycle.
Other comments about this technology:

How often furnace will need rebuild (change refractories). Volatilization of alkalies?

Pay special attention to process control for such a non-conventional rapid melter.
Contaminated soil remediation applications.

Have you tried pelletized batch as a feed source?

This could be a revolutionary step required to reduce costs due to lower capital costs.

Need to get an application operational.


Temperature vs. gaseous density?
Gives the industry a “flexible,” low volume or high volume technology. This does
enable new products for glass.
Excellent technical effort – optimization of burner firing good – nice results on
efficiency.

Very risky to implement.

Good job so far. Need to complete project objectives by program completion.

A must for continued support and collaboration until proof or non-proof of concept.
You should insist on a technical/economic projection of cost to deliver glass tonnage
to any forming/conditioning situation in a sector

Revolutionary – seems too good to be true – people tend to distrust new technology
and technologies that seem to offer too large benefits.

Can revolutionize the glass industry? Potentially reduce the cost of melting glass by
an order of magnitude (10x).

We may need to understand the corrosion effect between ceramic and molten glass.

Need to recover waste heat.

One reason for some lack of support is 80% reduction in refractory use. This project
offers a huge potential for technology and economic benefit to the glass industry!!

What are options for non-consortium GMIC members?

Great opportunity to evaluate different batch compositions without risk. Specifically
Li2O has been shown to lower melting temps significantly, especially in combination
with other alkalis such as Na, Ca.

A comparison should be made with (P10) furnace technology (PPG) as far as cost,
energy efficiency and scalability problem.

A plan for turn-key installations and training programs needs to be developed.

Rate of progress has been less than satisfactory. However, the project appears to be on
track now.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
II. HIGH INTENSITY PLASMA MELTING
What barriers remain for this technology?

Glass quality, equipment lifetime. Too sensitive to glass chemistry. Volatilization of
alkalies and B2O3 glass contamination. Pull rates too low.

Scale-up to mass production. High maintenance of system. Improvements in energy
efficiency. Long term operational stability and consistency.

Is foaming a problem during melting?

Fining and volatilization.

Energy cost, low throughputs.

Torch life and refining as SCM: this is “less conventional” than burners and therefore
there will be other barriers of introducing a new technology.

Torch life. Must develop new process for each glass. But flexibility impressive.

Life of parts. Throughputs that can be attained; throughputs seem low. Glass quality;
needs refining. Torch life, cost.

Applicable for only a very small part of glass market.

Final commercial proof of use.


Sum of electric power required per unit of glass product – too high. Cost of argon –
energized plasma glass (oxygen transmits high energy as in 1/44th cost of argon).
Electrode life – protect copper anode/cathode with platinum covering.
Torch life and economies of melting. Need for inert glass “shield”-very costly.

Volatilization of low volatiles in flame. This problem is not allowing them to melt all
glass compositions. They have to overcome this to be a viable kindred.

High cost of electricity.

Scale up and refining – very same issues as with the submerged combustion.

Reducing energy input/ton of glass. Must do next generation scale up with “new”
equipment to validate initial work. As with SCM, must couple with
fining/conditioning unit.

Convert to a cold top melter (raw batch on top) to pre-heat and control volatilization.
Fining, removal of bubbles.

Pretty much the same as SCM. However, significantly more work needs to be done to
get up to SCM output potentially.

Scale-up, electrodes life.

High cost of electricity in certain geographic regions.

Scale-up. Control/stability.
What near and long term opportunities and markets are there for this technology?


Specialty glass melting. High melting temperature materials. Solid waste
vitrification. Contaminated soil remediation as a mobile unit.
Near-term – very specialized fiber compositions and minerals.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review

Specialty markets.

Frits is probably the closest. Long-term will require much more effort to understand
scale; probably need more sophisticated modeling along with empirical to get there.

Should be looked at for defense applications now! Specialty glass the natural market.

Low from rates. Manufacturers niche markets.

Specialty, low volume glasses.

High temperature and other specialty glasses not needing extremely high tonnages.

Nuclear waste – rapid melting, no products of combustion – use oxygen and recycle
on energized plasma gas.

Perhaps useful for waste glassification. Need expensive glass product to use this high
cost process.

No very bright until they solve volatilization problem. Biggest opportunity is to make
near net shape quartz parts for semiconductor industry.

It appears to be limited to low volume glasses with a need for intermittent operation.

Near term: specialty glasses, fiber glasses. Long term: all glasses with low volume
applications. Combine technology with SCM? Long term. Melt booster in
conventional melters/forehearths, induction melters?

Mostly in hard to melt materials and highly flexible glass manufacture.

Specialty glasses, cycling, premelting.

Melting glass and ceramic frits.

Production booster for existing commercial melters. Specialty glasses.
Other comments about this technology:

Focus on the unique feature of compact design and mobility. Look into potential
applications in other industries such as mining, waste treatment, etc.

What are the gaseous content of the glasses? What is the retention of volatile
components and refining agents?

Appears to definitely have a place.

Rates attained so far are low. Capital cost seen low but operational costs may be high!

Very small market.

A success that ITP – glass can claim – do it! Blow your horn! The leaders in plasma
melting! What about metals?

Think about metals industry as well as glass. New applications of three component
metals – superconductivity as core in fiber optics to act as photon control for rapid
communication.

Arc size limits production volume of glass.

Improve torch life. Five times more experience than SCM.

This technology seems to have more potential for variability and issues with knowing
how to control the torches (angle, depth, etc.).
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
Great tool for special or “odd” glass compositions, even though they may be used for
later processing or re-melting.

I find this technology of interest for certain areas of glass and material manufacture.
However, I do not believe it will impact the major manufacturers of either.

Need to lobby for more nuclear power plants.

Good exploratory work. Much more work needs to be done to go from concept
demonstration to commercial usage.
III. GLASS FURNACE MODEL
What barriers remain for this technology?

Sustain the usefulness of the code when computer operating systems change. Support
issue.

This technology (or at least most of it) is behind the curve on what is currently
commercially available.

Support and applications.

Seems that the technical objective and the requirement for computing space/memory
are working against each other. Need to have modeling expertise to take advantage of
this.

Does not fit with anything else. Needs to be incorporated into a commercial platform.

Support in the future? Competing with many other softwares (GS, TNO, Fluent). No
marketing.

No further DOE money. Software needs continuing improvement and debugging.

It needs continued support, but Argonne is not the place to locate it.

Bad history following excellent reception 2004 demonstration by Mike Petrick at
Glass Problems Conference. For me, two trips to Argonne to become a user, two
day’s each – with absolutely nothing to show for the effort!

Future tech support for the code – no one will use it because future support is
nonexistent.

Commercial viability in view of established commercial companies (GS, TNO, etc.)

GFM V4.0 has not been beta tested by any users. Who will support this project going
forward? There does not appear to be a long range plan or support for the model.

Keep the code alive?

Coupling the batch to the combustion space model.
What near and long term opportunities and markets are there for this technology?

Important to compare with other modeling programs (like TNO).

Encourage all glass companies to use the code. Demonstrate the tangible benefits of
using the code.

Use sections of this code to collaborate with current commercial suppliers.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
Limited, difficult to compete with other commercially available code that have
significant support and glass expertise.
Difficult to say – not clearly articulated advantage over going to Fluent to have them
do upgrades for us. Best link into follow up with university link.

Not much.

Best plan would be to include modules of the technology by the other companies.

Almost nil unless program support mechanism can be found.

Please just give it away to Fluent, Glass Services and TNO and hope they will use it.
GMIC should offer license to all who join GMIC.

Tool for department head of mixing and melting. Opportunity to compare
accumulations of data, day to day operations for trends – and develop strategy for next
campaign design suggestions.

Sell it to a commercial entity as fast as possible so support could be guaranteed.

I do not see any opportunities for this model as long as there are no users and ongoing
support for the users. Continuing development would also be required to keep up with
the commercial models.

No comments – with my background, modeling is a foreign language.

May be useful for engineering firms.

I understand the concept of this small model but feel it is not to valuable for today’s
market. A large modeling company (Fluent, GS, TNO) will have problems supporting
a different code base. They may have an interest in.
Other comments about this technology:

Will we be able to try this program?

Consider an industry wide workshop (supported by registration fees).

Math models seem to get more complex and require a modeling expert while a simpler
model that can be run on a normal computer by production supervisors may be more
useable.

The best portions of the model should be licenses to current commercial suppliers of
modeling software. There is no mechanism in place to market and make sure that the
code continues to be developed.

Great work improving model, but still behind other commercial codes.

I don’t think it makes sense to have a national lab person trying to do GUI type work;
should focus on the technical part of the model and then collaborate with someone to
make it more user-friendly.

Future of the software is a question mark.

Critical need to get money to support one developer.

Declare victory and exit.

Link model with plants data base for key temperatures, fill, C/R, fuel usage for trends
and making cases for improvements in furnace design.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
Technology is not the problem – distribution and tech support is the blockage for
acceptance.

No comments – with my background, modeling is a foreign language.

Contact software company.

A GS “Lite” rather than a whole new platform. A software program without
continuous improvement and support is of little value.
IV. GLASS BANDWIDTH
What additional information should be pursued?

Fine specialty fiber production requires a lot of energy after glass melting (remelting,
fiberization).

To include forming operations.

A yearly or biannual measurement to update and measure improvements should be
made. Identity of best practice may help industry.

Expand to cover batch and cullet impacts.

How do we reconcile that some near term opportunities around Plasmelt and SCM
may be specialty focused but they were not included?

“Competitiveness” – jobs, both direct and indirect. Specialty glass.

Evaluate financially the different technologies. Double check some of the numbers
(e.g., oxygen production).

Getting answers from more participants will be helpful.

National Energy Policy to stabilize price by a variable tax between actual cost and
predictable linear increase to allow good financial analysis to invest in alternative
energy – that reduces the pressure on our finite natural gas supplies.

Need comments about cost of energy.

In our specialty glass manufacturing lines we spend around $0.06 for melting
compared to $1.00 for fiberization process.

Actual furnace data for all the segments.

Further collection and clarification of data from glass companies, if they will share
this. This “refining” of existing reported values will add strength and validity to this
report.

Batch composition influences – especially flux combinations including lithium.

If we look to Europe for comparisons we need to adjust for their higher cullet
percentages. There is also an environmental cost that plays (and will continue to be)
an important factor in cost analysis.

Nothing.

I have previously provided extensive set of comments and those have mostly been
incorporated.

Normalize energy data as X% cullet, include electric boost, state gross or high energy
value.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
How useful is benchmarking data to glassmaking and to your company’s future plans
for exploring energy-saving technologies?

Very useful if we can compare with similar type of melter (type of energy, size, etc.).

Very useful, allows companies to focus their limited resources to achieve maximum
return of investment.

Very.

The theoretical minimum is a good approach for showing opportunity areas.

Important to “snapshot” where we are vs. industry.

Know where we are vs. state-of-the-art.

We have data for our company. The data for industry does not help much. Data for
other parts of glass industry helpful.

When you are behind – it is the “two by four” that gets people’s attention to move on
investment strategies or, really focus on the boring maintaining process.

It would be useful.

Not much for our type of company that is involved in specialty fiber manufacturing.

Good idea!

Benchmarking studies are useful if the information provided is correct and factual for
the individual segment, i.e., the European Benchmark (Ruud Beerkens) had actual
furnace data.

This does not apply to me.

I believe this will be a very important tool to be used in future plans for expansion and
rebuilds. Also, it will be an incentive for engineering and consulting companies to get
involved.

In-house benchmarking is necessary, external is superfluous.

Very useful!

Provides industry interest in energy reduction technologies for our own funding.
Other comments about the bandwidth study:



Would be interesting to see data/research on function energy consumption – batch
(materials, particle size, melt accelerators, etc.).
Better quantify energy on SOA, PM, and TM taking into consideration of different
grades of energy.
Is there a “European Benchmarking” report? Do they report their best practices?

What temperature (max T) for theoretical? Different processes have different glass
temperatures. Propose use HTV as temperature for thermodynamic theoretical energy.

Good work!

Can use EIA cost projections for energy.

U.S. flat lines have good controls. One major difference between U.S. and European
glass lines is that U.S. has one block regenerator. Europeans have compartmentalized
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
their regenerators for each burner. This way Europeans are able to manage air-fuel
ratios better for their burners. This makes them get better energy efficiency in glass
melting.

Warren showed that this is a moving target with regular updating to achieve value.

Check energy/ton of O2. Show as kWh/ton O2 as well. ~35% conversion efficiency is
ok for coal fired power, but we should use the national average Btu/kWh including
hydro, nuclear, wind, etc.

This is a great overview of energy in the glass industry, all in one document that is
easy to read and digest.

Add up all energy – mixing, packaging, forklifts, etc.

As always these reports are only as good as the information being provided.

It gives consultants something to do.

Excellent work!

Great work.
V. COLLABORATION
How has the ITP program changed your thinking and behavior?

Gives wider scope. Provide new ideas and possible solutions. Opinion exchange is
very valuable. Formulation of general and specific problems is very important.

Greatly helped with collaboration and interactions within glass industry.

It’s a proven example of collaboration. It’s broadened awareness of how other
technology trends can affect the industry.

Started and promoted collaboration in the industry – this was not the case before.

Very valuable as pulling industry into one room.

Removed the iron hand of glass top management form preventing their employees
from speaking to an horror of horrors – actually participate in off plant site work with
colleagues from competing glass companies.

Yes.

Companies like Corning, Owens-Corning, JM have benefited from this. Small
industries like ours have been hampered because we can’t come up with sufficient
funding for the development work.
What else can be done to promote collaboration in the glass industry?

Workshop and grand challenges.

Continue to identify the common goals and leverage the GMIC to make it happen. (I
think we have made progress in the last year and a half.)

Still have an annual review of what is happening in Glass/ITP programs that is of use
to GMIC, etc.

Have all glass companies join and participate in GMIC. Open membership to North
America – for a start. Rely on suppliers – as the prime source of good ideas for
quality improvements.
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
Get upper management to buy into the work that will advance the industry or at least
the cost of making our products.

It must get the support of glass manufacturers CEO and tech director.
Other comments about collaboration:

It is as important to solicit the engineering and consulting, equipment and material
suppliers, to promote ideas and scenarios for industry advancement.

We need more.

Technologies must be investigated that have shorter term results and impact on the
industry.
VI. ALTERNATIVE FUELS
Is your company concerned with the potential for natural gas price increases in the
future?

Yes.

Yes and today’s prices are also pushing us!

Yes.

Yes, but we have no cohesive program as of yet.

No – electric.

Yes, but focus is not as important as it was last year.

That is one item that is without question. Sure, it will rise and more importantly, will
we have fuel at any price.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, of course.

As it affects our customers.

Yes.

Yes and one group is looking into coal gasification, etc. My feeling that oal
gasification is a low level glass industry project.
Are you investigating alternative fuels, and what sources seem to offer the most
promise?

No, rather looking for more efficient processes and materials.

Yes we are. Synfuels seem very promising; coal gasification requires a consortium
locally which makes it difficult.

Yes.

We do not want to actively manage our own fuel generation. We would be interested
in the technology if it could be supplied.

Yes, for power generation.
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
No.

We should not forget electric melting as an alternative to natural gas. What has
happened to hydrogen?

Yes.

Yes, we are looking at plasma, etc.

Yes. Petroleum coke; coal.

We do not currently have a project underway.

Not at this time.

Electric melting.

The conversion of coal to electrical power in large generating plants is the most useful
and efficient use of our natural resource. If the use of coal and the elimination of
natural gas for power generation was legislated there would be little “short term” need
for coal gasification.
Would your company be willing to join a coalition of glass industry members to
investigate and develop alternative fuels?

Yes.

Yes!

Possibly.

Yes.

Yes we have signed on. Good idea to run Eastman’s synthetic gas at AFG plant to
understand the quality issues with syn-gas and its behavior with different burners.
Need to build a connection for the evaluation.

Maybe.

Of course.

No, we make glass not gas!
Other comments about alternative fuels:

The easiest way would involve a step-wise approach. Financial projections would
help to get management convinced of viability.

Biomass and coal gasification may make sense but I am skeptical on a small scale
gasifier for each glass plant. Maybe Booz Allen can change my skepticism. Glass
makers are best at glass making, not gas making, better for them to receive a fuel in a
pipeline they can use which is why I continue to favor for now, synthetic natural gas,
but prove me wrong is ok.

Alternative fuels would have to be developed without creating a change in the design
of the melter or the ports which would trigger a permit issue with the EPA. In most
cases, any change to the melter design (i.e., brick for brick replacement) will trigger a
permit and possibly require controls.

Like coal gasification project, biomass technologies now being undertaken to generate
biofuels may be of interest in some geographical areas of the U.S.
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2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
Nuclear!
VII. FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
What other technology opportunities should be pursued in glassmaking?

Fining process concepts need to be considered to help move the SCM and plasma
programs into the industry.

Sensors. Controls.

Engineered raw materials. Cost of a pound of glass delivered to forming for either of
the high intensity melters.

Nano glass fiber technology has to be funded by the glass industry. It has a very
bright future involving glass strength issues, filtration, etc.

Potential contribution from batch composition especially regarding fluxes and
combination of fluxes.

Alternative compositions. Alternative coatings. Improved furnace designs and
refractories. Heat recovery.
What else could ITP do to help maximize energy efficiency improvements in
glassmaking?

Workshops, promote tours of technology and best in class.

National standards (not state, and/or local) should be sought for things like energy
efficient window glass, insulation, etc. Look at the 2006 requirement for home air
conditioning changing from 10 SEER to 13 SEER.

More workshops.
Other comments about future opportunities:
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The study through GMIC Energy Subcommittee sounds great!
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Need help in developing technology like electrospinning technology for making nano
glass fibers.
VIII. OTHER COMMENTS
Please provide any other comments you wish to share:
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Could you post the presentations on GMIC website?
As Dick Marshal suggested – if all electric power that is now natural gas – would
switch to syn-gas, we would have abundant aid in expensive natural gas for industry –
for maybe 10-15 years. Our gas production capability “has peaked” and will be less
and less by 2020. By then this alternative may be required to heat our houses.
Assign someone on the board to serve as a “time keeper” for the workshop/meeting in
order to stay on schedule of the agenda. This should be someone other than Michael
who is trying to run the meeting – he needs help to keep on schedule.
Perhaps Elliott could talk to DOE personnel involved in biofuels projects in the U.S.
and see what synergy exists with glass industry/GMIC interests. In the pulp industry,
black liquor gasification has been an ongoing project. Also, the U.S., Canada,
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WORKSHOP SURVEY
2006 DOE/GMIC Glass Workshop and Review
Finland, and Sweden used IEA Annex XV to work on this technology and fund
projects to develop this technology.
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Composition has not been addressed for contribution to energy reduction, processing
and property improvements. These are recognized and exploited by other
geographical areas in the world but overlooked in USA. Production pressures suggest
GMIC leadership in this area is required.
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