Solubility of gases in glass melts

Abstract

AbstractA short overview on gas solubility and solubility mechanism in oxide melts in given. Many gases of practical importance in glass melting like oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide and others dissolve in a glass forming melt both chemically by a chemical controlled process and physically by occupying the holes in the network structure. The chemical solubility at conditioning temperatures is orders of magnitude higher than the physical solubility and decreases with increasing temperatures. An exception is water whose chemical solubility increases with increasing temperature, and that is why water cannot be used as a fining agent. The physical solubility on the other hand increases slightly with increasing temperatures. At measuring physical solubilities mistakes can be made because of the omnipresent chemical solubility or because of impurities. Therefore the known relationship between physical inert gas solubilities and the size of the dissolving atoms or molecules was used to calculate the physical solubility of a lot of non‐inert gases for soda‐lime silica melts, for fused silica and for molten boric oxide.