STARworks & East Montgomery High's First Glassblowing Class in action. My students are working on there hardest assignments yet the dreaded 6" cylinder!!!

Here it is! One of the neatest things we have done yet, our batch pre-heater/ heat exchanger. You can see in the photo an elbow comes directly off of the flue. It then attaches to a T that we made with two butterfly valves inside. With those in place we can direct heat to either the batch box, heat exchanger, or both at the same time!! Craziness! The largest diameter horizontal cylinder is the heat exchanger. It has two pipes coming in and out of it that circulate glycol. To and from a heat storage tank down in the bio-diesel area.

Well, the annual "gathering" is over. It was a blast. My students from East Montgomery High helped out with a killer glassblowing demo. We made a Giant Central Park NC Leaf! The students had a blast and really showed that they are becoming more and more comfortable with the material.
Right now we are very actively trying to get a heat exchanger and batch pre-heater fabricated and put up in the studio. What it is going to do is take the waste heat from off the furnace. Divert some of it down to an insulated box for pre-heating batch before charging. The rest of the heat will pass through the heat exchanger and through an air to liquid exchange the heat energy will end up stored in bio-fuels. The heat that is stored will be used as process heat needed to convert used vegetable oil into bio-diesel! Pretty cool right.