Developed by internationally recognized glass scientist Dr. Richard Lehman, Green Mountain Glass, LLC’s patented CulChrome ® technology offers substantial new benefits to glass container manufacturers, glass cullet processors, glass container users and the glass recycling industry.
Green Mountain Glass, LLC (GMG) has combined this technology with the glass recycling expertise of FCR, Inc., the recycling division of Casella Waste Systems, Inc. (CWST), a NASDAQ company. GMG is now actively exploring alliances and marketing programs to move large quantities of mixed cullet into the glass manufacturing stream. This, in turn, should dramatically increase opportunities for glass recycling in communities across the U.S. and throughout the world.
GMG’s technology provides for the decolorization and colorization of molten glass consisting of a high percentage of clean 3-mix cullet which we refer to as C3MC™ cullet. GMG’s CulChrome ® patents describe a technique and formulation allowing for the decolorization and colorization of multicolored glass cullet such that typical post consumer recycled multicolored glass cullet may now be used to replace up to 70% of virgin batch raw materials (i.e. silica sand et al.) while producing the exact glass color and transmissivity as is commonly specified for amber or green glass containers.
The key advantages to the GMG technology are 1.) increased glass recycling through the elimination of the need for the costly step of color separation of cleaned post consumer recycled glass cullet and 2.) the elimination of the need to color blend the cleaned 3-mix to a predetermined color balance. Even without these restrictions, the glass manufacturer may use up to 70% of this cullet in the batch. Eliminating the requirement for color separation accomplishes two goals: first, it allows the cullet beneficiator to redirect a portion of its color separation facilities and manpower to cullet cleaning; second, the cost of beneficiation is reduced due to lower processing costs and a significantly higher recovery percentage of the incoming glass. This, in turn, increases overall glass recycling. The cost of C3MC™ cullet is driven below the cost of single color cullet. GMG’s technology thus enables the glass manufacturer to receive all of the economic and environmental benefits of cullet over virgin batch at a significantly lower production cost than single color cullet.
GMG’s CulChrome® technology requires the use of only small amounts of readily available, inexpensive chemical additives to manage the color control. These materials are easily incorporated into the current glass plant materials handling process. The batch formulations are determined using GMG’s Batch Reformulation Software System (BRSS). This system utilizes an optical reader on the cullet feed belt and the batch reformulation algorithms developed for the batch reformulation software. For amber or green bottles the glass manufacturer may use C3MC™ cullet at up to 70% of batch as tons glass produced in conjunction with the BRSS.
