The main products of aerogel and the product forms of current application of aerogel are mainly insulating aerogel blanket, sheet, cloth, paper, particle, powder and shaped parts. Aerogel blanket, sheet, cloth, paper and profiled parts are all made from the composite fiber of aerogel and corresponding product forms. The basic technical process is similar, but the product application is quite different.

Aerogel blanket is the largest and most widely used aerogel product at present, and an aerogel company in the United States has indicated that it only produces aerogel blanket. The aerogel blanket can be used in all applications mentioned in the part of market analysis, such as aerospace military industry, petrochemical industry, metallurgical building materials, refrigerator and refrigerator.

Aerogel cloth, paper and profiled are mainly used for some special needs. For example, the aerogel cloth is mainly the field of clothing shoes and hats, and the aerogel paper (thin felt) is mainly the field of hot batteries and some fields with small space or extremely small pipe diameter or want to be wrapped. The aerogel profiled parts are basically military applications and making detachable insulation cover.

Aerogels sheet, actually blanket and board a main distinction is hardness only different, blanket has flexibility and crimp, board has certain rigidity, not easy to bend. The main application of the board is large equipment thermal insulation and the future of the building energy - saving interior wall thermal insulation. For the board, the current challenge is thickness. The customer often wants to reach a thickness of 5-10cm, while the maximum thickness of aerogels is only 1cm at present.

One of the problems common to the above products is the dust on the surface of the product, which is another pain point of aerogels besides high cost. The product of a foreign company has significantly improved this problem. Currently, there is no dust-free product in China, but it should be overcome soon.

At present, aerogel particles are mainly used to fill the PC board or insulating glass with the transparency of aerogel. Although there are certain market applications, they are still small in scale.

Aerogel powder, relatively speaking, aerogel powder is the most primary and the lowest cost of production is the easiest product (before we know most of them are powder nanomaterials, because of the nano powder preparation process is relatively simple), aerogel industrialization history should also starting powders, but unfortunately, so far, there is no find meaningful for aerogel powder batch applications. A new foreign enterprise has positioned aerogel powder as the main product, and its target market is aerogels paint, and actively positioned the Chinese market. It sounds beautiful, but check back for an analysis of the aerogel coating.

In addition to the above products, friends often consult aerogels vacuum board (VIP) and aerogels paint. First of all, it should be noted that the performance of aerogels vacuum plates is indeed very excellent, with a minimum of 0.002w/m.k, but the author does not have much interest in vacuum plates. In fact, the vacuum plate made of common glass fiber can reach the thermal conductivity coefficient of 0.004w/m.k, and the core made of aerogels is either used for a small amount of material or just a gimmick. The most problem is the nature of the vacuum plate leak is inevitable, it is only a matter of time before, if used in the life of 10 years of home appliance industry, barely, if used in the field of the service life of the 70 building, for vacuum packaging vacuum for aluminium plate to do with building life, both in theory and engineering data is not convincing. At the very least, even if the vacuum plate can not leak air, how can the air tight vacuum plate avoid moisture condensation, how can the vacuum plate which cannot be nailed and riveted not make sure that the insulation layer will not fall off in large areas? These are real bruises.

Let's talk about aerogel coatings. Coatings in traditional thermal insulation materials are very important products, playing an irreplaceable role in many fields. Since the birth of aerogel, the call to aerogel coatings has not stopped, and in recent years this call seems to be more serious. Some time ago had abroad some well-known company rolled out aerogels mortar and coating, still obtained a big prize. I was overjoyed at the news and finally solved the problem after years. Later, I checked the specific product performance index parameters, and the excitement immediately dissipated. The thermal conductivity of 0.035w/m.k was really sorry for aerogels. Some domestic companies also develop aerogel coatings, and the indicators are basically between 0.035 and 0.060w/m.k. Aerogels paint such indicators and traditional insulation coating on the cost performance is not competitive.

Why is it so hard to develop aerogel coatings? It's all because of the pore structure of the aerogel. Aerogels have a lot of magical properties due to the nanoporous structure, which makes it difficult to apply and develop the coatings. Aerogel is nano hole structure, aerogel coating will inevitably cause the aerogel mixed with liquid medium, whether water reagent or oily reagents, it is difficult to avoid the liquid immersion people within the aerogel holes after capillary force as mentioned above, so that the nano porous structure, and serious damage, and even complete loss adiabatic performance. Aerogel coating is the second largest is difficult to cross the threshold of the aerogel as lower thermal conductivity than the air super thermal insulation material, when the powder dispersed in coating, namely the aerogel become dispersed phase, namely islands, heat will bypass these islands continue to deliver, so difficult to prepared match the aerogel itself excellent insulating performance of coatings.

Is there really no solution to aerogel coatings? Remember middle school physics teacher said, as long as there are boundary conditions, all problems have solution! By virtue of this sentence, the author's unremitting efforts and efforts have won the favor of luck. At present, the index of aerogel coating developed by the author is 0.025w/m.k. So guys, come on, the aerogel coating is something you can keep working on. Articles come from the Internet

Aerogel equipment