About Aerogels Australia
www.aerogel.com.au
AEROGELS: AN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCT
This material is obtained by gelation of silica in a solvent. After eliminating the solvent, "inflated sand" remains, whose porosity can equal up to 99%. The nanopores are dense and numerous enough to slow down the transportation of heat and mass, thus providing very low thermal conductivity.
Two innovations introduced by Aspen have transformed aerogel from a laboratory experiment to a widely used industrial product:
- the process of extraction (which uses supercritical CO2) shortens the aerogel production cycle from months to hours.
- the process of transforming aerogel into an insulating sheet provides mechanical integrity and a shape suitable for its use.
Aspen Aerogels: super-insulation performance in a flexible and complete shape.
A UNIVERSAL SOLUTION
Aspen Aerogels can be used at temperatures ranging from - 200°C to + 635°C, that is in most residential and industrial applications, thus providing a wide set of diversified and advanced solutions to cover the entire temperature range.
Aspen Aerogels is appropriate for extremely specialized sectors including high technology (aerospace, naval engineering, automobile), as well as in the most standard fields, i.e. construction, household appliances and industrial plant engineering, which rely heavily on energy conservation and cost savings.
Aspen Aerogels comes in sheets 1440 mm wide and is available in 3 versions:
- Cryogel™ - for low-temperature applications
- Spaceloft® - for mid-temperature applications
- Pyrogel® - for high-temperature applications
Each product line is supplied in various thicknesses to meet all application needs. The products can also be coated and opacified.
CRYOGEL™, SPACELOFT® and PYROGEL® are trademarks of Aspen Aerogels, Inc.
GENERAL FIELDS OF APPLICATION
Building and construction
Aspen Aerogels building and construction solutions provide the highest R values with extremely slim profiles, practically eliminating thermal bridging. This leads to an effective increase of the building total energy efficiency, excellent thermal and acoustic performances, and also to new application areas that have not been considered to date, such as insulating windows and sections of the roof where conventional materials cannot be installed due to their excessive thickness. Considerable space saving thanks to slim profiles and installation speed.
Appliance
Aspen Aerogels provides thermal insulation solutions for a variety of applications of household appliances. The ultra-thin ready-to-use blankets with extremely low thermal conductivity allow household-appliance designers to make insulation in tight areas such as walls and doors much easier.
Heating and air conditioning
Thanks to its very thin profiles, Aspen Aerogels insulation provides thermal performance that is similar or better to that obtained with conventional insulation, thus dramatically reducing the external diameters of piping and saving much space and very high installation costs.
Processing
Aspen Aerogels offers the best solutions for industrial hydrocarbon, chemical and food plants and installations. Less energy loss means a greater piping efficiency: this is the value-added combination provided by Aspen Aerogels to guarantee sustainable use of energy and cut production costs.
LNG ships, storage tanks and transfer systems -Aerogels Australia
Aspen Aerogels offers the growing LNG market significant savings opportunities, thanks to the improved insulating ability in gas tankers and container and piping systems. The improved thermal performance allows customers to reduce both system and system-management costs.
Military and Aerospace - Aerogels Australia
Aspen Aerogels flexible blankets are currently used for thermal insulation both at high temperatures and for cryogenic applications, as they provide infrared and acoustic signature suppression, as well as fire protection in many fields of military and aerospace applications.
Outdoor apparel
Thanks to its flexibility, reduced thickness and mechanical resistance, Aspen Aerogels is widely used in the footwear industry and to manufacture sports jackets and camping tents used in the most extreme environments and to protect athletes from heavy-duty strains. The choice of the American Space Agency and the armed forces to equip their men and means often operating in extreme conditions with these products is the best guarantee of safety for all customer
THE EVOLUTION OF THERMAL INSULATION
Aerogel is a low-density, solid-state, nanoporous material first synthesized by Steven Kistler in 1931 and then re-launched thanks to its use in the suits and jackets worn by NASA astronauts.
The first jacket with an aerogel padding (called “Absolute Zero”) was created in 1999. This jacket was later perfected in the Antarctic areas, where it was worn in the most severe weather conditions on the earth and easily passed all tests.
A 3 mm thick layer of aerogel can protect the human body even at temperatures below -50°C. This would make clothing in cold regions much lighter and more practical to wear. As a matter of fact, an equivalent layer of fiberglass would have to be at least 30 times thicker to obtain similar thermal insulating performance.
This example serves to understand the advantages of using aerogel in the various fields of application where thermal insulation is a must.
Nano-peculiarities - Aerogels Australia
The term "gel" derives from the process of extraction that determines the formation of the nanoporous material. The diameter of an aerogel pore is equal to 1/10,000 of that of a human hair. Aerogel is also referred to as "frozen smoke" because of its hazy blue appearance. A nanoporous material has a large inner surface, expressed by the sum of the surface of all its nanopores. A piece of carbon-based aerogel the size of a sugar cube can have an inner surface equal to 2,000 m². In 1999, a piece of aerogel was sent into space for 5 years in the CIDA dust analyzer developed by Germany. It travelled over 3 billion kilometres capturing dust from the comet Wild 2.
