What is aerogel insulation

Why is Aerogel a Good Thermal Insulator? The solid component in silica aerogel consists of tiny, three-dimensional, intertwined clusters. This air has very little room to move, inhibiting both convection and gas-phase conduction. Or Create a new project board:.

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Architecture Construction Product Specification Sustainability. We are in the midst of a new race to explore outer space , and new materials are at the forefront of technological advancement.

Consider the needs of a spacesuit. It must protect the astronaut from the extreme temperatures of space, yet be as thin and light as possible to aid in manoeuvrability.

NASA developed aerogel insulation materials for use in space exploration , but in recent years, aerogels have become commercially available and are finding uses in a variety of other areas. Aerogels are excellent thermal insulators. Here, a piece of aerogel protects a flower from a blowtorch. Aerogels are advanced materials that, due to their ultra-porous structure, allow engineers to design not only new thermal insulation for space suits and vehicles , but also filters, batteries, solar heat collectors, and more.

Rather, they are a special form of solid that can be made from silica , polymers, oxides, carbon, and other materials. Aerogels are ultra-porous materials , which means that although they are solid, they are full of tiny air-filled holes called pores. While many materials are porous, such as foams and certain ceramics , aerogels are an extreme case. In aerogels, pores make up most of the material , resulting in an ultra-light solid material.

The pores in aerogels are also extremely small, far smaller than a human hair and too tiny to be seen with the naked eye. Amongst these is the fact that they are amid the lightest materials ever made or discovered , which makes them especially useful in aerospace applications where weight savings is vital.

The key to these unique properties is the fact that aerogels are not only highly porous , but the pores are also extremely small — too small to see with the human eye. This means that aerogels not only benefit from the low thermal conductivity of the air inside the pores, but also the air cannot flow easily , which further enhances their abilities as thermal insulators.

In spite of their name, aerogels are not gels , they are highly porous solids which are mostly composed of air. Aerogels start as a liquid , are transformed into a gel, then the liquid is removed. The thermal conductivity of an aerogel can be also be adjusted this way, since thermal conductivity is related to density. Typically, aerogels exhibit bulk densities ranging from 0. Other properties such as transparency, color, mechanical strength, and susceptibility to water depend primarily on the composition of the aerogel.

Carbon aerogels, on the other hand, are totally opaque and black. Furthermore, iron oxide aerogels are just barely translucent and can be either rust-colored or yellow. Thus it can be seen that by adjusting processing parameters and exploring new compositions, we can make materials with a versatile range of properties and abilities.

The Flower, the Mona Lisa of aerogel pictures, dramatically demonstrates the superinsulating properties of silica aerogel by insulating a delicate, moist flower from the raging heat of a Bunsen burner image credit Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A more in-depth discussion of the properties of silica aerogel and other historically underrepresented types of aerogel can be found in the Flavors of Aerogel section.

In general aerogels are pretty fragile. Inorganic aerogels are friable and and will snap when bent or, in the case of very low density aerogels, when poked, cleaving with an irregular fracture. This said, depending on their density, aerogels can usually hold a gently applied load of up to 2, times their weight and sometimes more. Organic polymer aerogels are less fragile than inorganic aerogels and are more like green potting foam in consistency in that they are squish irreversibly.

Carbon aerogels, which are derived from organic aerogels, have the consistency of activated charcoal and are very much not squishy.