The development of refractories for glass furnaces in China will continue to focus on the life of glass furnaces, the quality and cost of glass products, energy consumption and environmental protection. In other words, the main problem faced by refractories for glass furnaces is the development of low-temperature melting. That is, with the application of glass furnace oxygen-enriched combustion, full oxygen combustion, arsenic-free material melting process and electric melting technology, will put forward higher requirements for refractory materials, especially cast refractory materials. The author believes that the development trend of refractory materials for glass furnaces in China should be shown in the following three aspects.

(1) Integration and reorganization of refractory production enterprises for glass furnaces

Most of the glass kiln refractory production enterprises in China have small production scale, weak technical force, backward technology and equipment, and difficult to guarantee product quality. Taking fused cast refractories as an example, in recent years, China has built more than 30 fused cast refractories enterprises, which has changed the situation that China's fused cast refractories rely on imports, and the quality of its products can basically meet the requirements of glass melting furnaces. But compared to the European West, Japan Asahi and other companies, in addition to smaller, product varieties are relatively single. Has not yet formed a cast refractory-based, multi-species production and management of supporting development. That is, the power and technical advantages of casting or other refractory production enterprises, explore the establishment of alkaline refractory materials, silica brick, corundum, mullite refractory materials and new amorphous refractory production enterprises supporting system. That is, through the integration and reorganization of the industry, we will build 1 to 2 strong enterprises that can provide high-quality refractory materials for the whole kiln, and reduce the impact on glass enterprises due to multiple configurations.

(2) The specific consumption of refractory materials for glass furnaces is getting smaller and smaller

With the improvement of the quality and performance of refractories, the life of glass melting furnaces will be longer and longer. At present, the design life of the new float glass furnace can reach 10 years, the life of the ordinary glass furnace is 5 to 7 years, and the life of the special glass furnace is 2 years. That is, the specific consumption of refractory materials will become smaller and smaller. Therefore, the author believes that the consumption of refractory materials for glass kilns in China will not increase greatly in the next period of time, but the structure of refractory materials will be greatly changed, and the amount of traditional silica bricks and ordinary magnesia bricks will be greatly reduced. And high-quality cast refractories will increase significantly. In addition, the new type of unshaped refractory will also be widely used in glass melting furnaces.

(3) Cooperation between glass and refractory production enterprises to study the optimal allocation of refractory materials.

Glass and refractory production enterprises should strengthen technical cooperation, in addition to the development of new refractory materials suitable for glass melting furnaces, should focus on the optimal configuration of refractory materials in different parts of the glass melting furnace, more reasonable to extend the service life of the furnace and optimize the relevant technical indicators. First of all, it is necessary to find the key parts that affect the age of the glass melting furnace, find the problems of refractory materials in this part and solve them; secondly, technical cooperation should focus on economic benefits, energy conservation and environmental protection, and must not be partial waste, that is, glass enterprises are not just for experiments, refractory enterprises are not just for product promotion.

In short, China's glass furnace refractories will continue to develop with the development of the glass manufacturing industry, glass furnace refractories and glass manufacturing industry between the two, in the development of mutual promotion, in technology to promote each other, in the operation of interdependence of the situation is more obvious.