Aerogel insulation materials for industrial installation: properties and structure of new factory-made products

Abstract

In this article the comparisons of two new factory-made Chinese aerogel products with the Pyrogel® product, all available on the market, are presented. The aerogel products are in a flexible blanket form and all products are dedicated for high temperature applications. The properties of the samples such as their dimension stability, water vapour transmission and water absorption are also described. Additionally the microstructure and chemical composition of the products are analysed using SEM/ EDS (scanning electron microscopy coupled with X-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy). The differences in the maximum service temperature are presented. The internal self-heating of the aerogel samples is described and is compared to a similar effect observed in mineral wool samples. The results in the change of the thermal properties in a wide range of temperatures (+ 10-600°C) are shown. The obtained results are correlated with the mineral wool data. The correlation shows an advantage in a highefficiency thermal performance of aerogel products compared to other insulation materials at high temperatures. Graphical Abstract

Preparation of Silica Aerogels by Ambient Pressure Drying without Causing Equipment Corrosion

“…Silica aerogel is a kind of promising materials for thermal insulation due to its extremely low thermal conductivity (~0.04 W/(m∙K)) originated from low density (<0.1 g/cm 3 ), high porosity (~99%), and adjustable nanoporous structure, together with its strong resistance to burning [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Generally, silica aerogel is produced by a sol-gel technique with silicon alkoxides, such as tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) [ 6 , 7 ] or tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) [ 8 , 9 ] as precursors.…”

Hybrid materials based on inorganic aerogel and organic luminophore

“…They are also used as Cherenkov detectors, sensors and capacitors [8]. Silica aerogel was chosen as the matrices for pure phosphor because of great porosity up to 99%, high surface area ~ 1000 m 2 /g [9], operating temperatures up to 650 °C [10,11]. It is a non-combustible material, has a relatively low toxicity and a high degree of transparency for visible light.…”

Development of a New Silica Aerogel-Polypropylene Foam Composite as a Highly Flexible Thermal Insulation Material

“…Composites with nanofibers such as cellulose (Cai et al, 2012) and polyvinylidene fluoride (Wu et al, 2013) demonstrated very high flexibility. Combination of silica aerogels and nonwoven sheets or fiber felts has been successfully marketed as industrial products from Aspen Aerogels, Cabot Corporation and other suppliers (Miros et al, 2017) and have been applied as thermal insulation for pipelines, buildings, residences and in protective clothing. When the fibric compound content is low, the thermal conductivity of these materials is close to that of silica aerogels (∼0.02 W/(m • K).…”