Glass is a non-crystallineamorphous solid that is often transparent and has widespread practical,technological, and decorative usage in, for example, window panes, tableware,and optoelectronics. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types ofglass are "silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica(silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand. The term glass,in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, whichis familiar from use as window glass and in glass bottles. Of the manysilica-based glasses that exist, ordinary glazing and container glass is formedfrom a specific type called soda-lime glass, composed of approximately 75%silicon dioxide (SiO2), sodium oxide (Na2O) from sodium carbonate (Na2CO3),calcium oxide, also called lime (CaO), and several minor additives.There are various methods of glass making other thanmelting for example condensation of vapours, conversion of crystals to anamorphous form using mechanical means or irradiation with fast neutrons,dehydration and sintering of gels, etc.DEMAND OFGLASS
Indianpackaging industry is pegged to be around $ 15 billion with a growth rate of 15% approximately, out of which Indian container glass industry stands at $ 0.87billion with an approximate growth rate of 12 %. The Indian float glass isestimated to be around $ 0.76 billion with growth rate of 32 % in the lastfiscal year. The comparison between per capita consumption of glass incountries like the USA - 27.5 kg and Japan 10.2 kg suggests that India with aconsumption of 1.4 kg has a huge scope for significant growth opportunities.
India has welldeveloped glass container manufacturing industry, which remained rudimentaryfor a long period. The industry has evolved to adopt modern processes andautomation in a large way. The current installed capacity of the industry isover 7,000 tons per day. Indian float glass market has an installed capacity ofaround 3000 tons per day.