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Schott wins SPIE Catalyst Award for glass production trials with hydrogen gas

03 Feb 2025

Industrial-scale first as 100% hydrogen used to produce optical glass without compromising quality.

Optics and photonics society SPIE has chosen Schott as the winner of its latest “Catalyst Award”, after the Germany-headquartered glass giant showed it is possible to make optical-grade glass with hydrogen rather than methane.

Schott revealed last April that it had been able to produce the glass with 100 per cent hydrogen in an industrial-scale furnace for three days, a year after it had trialled the approach on a smaller scale in a laboratory.

A widespread switch to hydrogen gas in glass production could help cut emissions of methane, which is known to be a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

“The SPIE Catalyst Award, in its second year, celebrates organizations that make significant contributions to environmental sustainability,” announced SPIE. “Schott’s pioneering efforts in decarbonizing high-temperature glass melting - a process requiring temperatures of up to 1700°C - set a new benchmark for sustainability in glass production.”

Initial tests on a production tank with 35 per cent hydrogen over a four-week period, followed by 100% hydrogen firing in an optical glass tank, demonstrated that hydrogen can replace natural gas entirely.

Schott’s head of “sustainability communications”, Jonas Spitra, added: “Earning the SPIE Catalyst Award underscores our commitment to leading innovations for carbon-reduced glass production.

“This recognition reaffirms our belief that decarbonizing glass production is not only possible but critical to a sustainable future. At Schott, we will continue to develop further technological solutions on our journey.”

Gray and green hydrogen
The demonstration augments the glass maker’s ongoing efforts to minimize its carbon footprint, which have seen it adopt green energy and rethink how glass is made. Thus far the company has only been able to use so-called “gray” hydrogen, where the hydrogen manufacturing process also releases carbon dioxide gas.

“We have heavily invested in research and development and have proved that we can produce the same high-quality glass with hydrogen,” noted Spitra. “The current lack of a viable infrastructure and competitive pricing for green hydrogen however present challenges to further scale up our testing. We urge policymakers to establish improved framework conditions to further drive innovative ideas.”

If production of green hydrogen, which is made by using electricity from renewable energy sources to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen with electrolysis, can be scaled up in the future then Schott says it would be well-positioned to adopt the approach.

Coinciding with its annual Prism Awards, which are handed out during SPIE’s Photonics West event in San Francisco, the Catalyst Award recognizes companies judged to be making significant social or environmental impact.

“This award recognizes outstanding programs supporting equity, diversity and inclusion, community outreach and education, or environmental impact,” says the society.

Last year the award went to Intel, for its employee programs offering accelerated training to people returning from a career break, or from communities that have traditionally been under-represented in the technology industry.

SPIE’s CEO Kent Rochford said: “Each year, the SPIE Prism Awards showcase a comprehensive range of innovative products based on optics and photonics technology.

“By bringing these optics and photonics enabled products to market, these companies - the finalists as well as the winners - offer us transformative technologies that will impact lives across the world. It’s been a true pleasure to congratulate them in person.”

Sacher Lasertechnik GmbHCHROMA TECHNOLOGY CORP.LaCroix Precision OpticsChangchun Jiu Tian  Optoelectric Co.,Ltd.HÜBNER PhotonicsPhoton Lines LtdOptikos Corporation
© 2025 SPIE Europe
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