Closer, a foreign company launched a cold jacket attracted public attention. This only 3mm thick cold jacket has the same insulation effect as the 40mm duck down jacket. In the liquid nitrogen test at about minus 196 degrees Celsius, the inside of the jacket can maintain a temperature of about 31.6 degrees Celsius, which is enough to prove its constant temperature performance.
This coat is that it uses a new aerogel material. In fact, from space shuttles to ships, from badminton rackets to hiking shoes, aerogels, which are called "world-changing materials", are getting closer and closer to our lives.
The world's known lighter solids
If it is done well, the solid aerogel can even float in the air; the front is subjected to a flame spray of more than 1000 degrees Celsius, and the back can still be touched by hand... This is the aerogel. Tian Lei, chairman of Beijing Aibiai and New Materials Co., Ltd., told Science and Technology Daily that aerogel, also known as air gel, solid smoke or blue smoke, is a nano-scale porous thermal insulation material.
In layman's terms, an aerogel is a form of matter. The 2014 World Conference on Materials proposed that this form consists of more than 90% air and less than 10% solids. It can withstand a pressure equivalent to thousands of times its own mass, and will only melt when the temperature reaches 1200 degrees Celsius. In addition, its thermal conductivity and refractive index are also very low, and its insulation capacity is 39 times stronger than that of better glass fiber. Because of these characteristics, aerogel has become an irreplaceable material in space exploration. The Russian "Peace" space station and the US "Mars Pathfinder" probe use it for insulation. In addition to aerospace, aerogel can also be widely used in military, petrochemical, electric power, metallurgy, construction, clothing and many other fields. It is a revolutionary alternative to traditional insulation materials.
Funded by Germany, is one of the scholars who studied aerogels earlier. He told Science and Technology Daily that the reason why aerogels have such a nature is mainly due to their special nanoporous structure.
"everyone is familiar with the procedure of making tofu. we first use raw materials to make soya-bean milk, and then solidify it into tofu. if the water in tofu is squeezed out, the volume will be greatly reduced. the preparation of aerogel is similar to squeezing out the water in tofu, but the volume cannot be reduced, and it is difficult to supplement gas." Shen Jun said.
As long as the liquid in the gel is replaced by gas, and the network structure of the gel remains basically unchanged, the obtained materials become aerogels. There are many types of aerogels, including silicon, carbon, sulfur, metal oxidation series and so on.
At the top of the pyramid in the insulation market
Shen Jun said that in 1931, the Kistler of Stanford University in the United States obtained aerogels for the first time by hydrolyzing water glass. However, due to the complexity of the process and the high cost, the aerogel has not attracted enough attention after its advent. In the 1980 s, some physicists in Europe began to notice this new material and began to study it. In 1985, the Institute of Physics of the University of Würzburg, Germany, organized the first "Aerogel Symposium". By the early 1990 s, Americans had re-entered aerogel research. In 1993, aerogels were applied to space suits, spaceships, and space shuttles.
The Bohr Institute of Solid State Physics of Tongji University, funded by Germany, identified aerogels as one of the research directions as early as 1991. Due to the close relationship with Germany, the laboratory was able to quickly obtain aerogel preparation technology. "We quickly reached the level in a short period of time." Shen Jun said.
At that time was mainly concentrated in the field of nuclear physics. Shen Jun said that by around 2000, due to high costs and difficulty in achieving technological breakthroughs in large-scale industrial production, aerogels had never developed as an industry. In recent years, due to the shortage of energy demand and the deterioration of the global ecological environment, the academic circles and the industry have begun to tackle the industrialization of aerogels.
"It was not until around 2013 that the industry developed, and the United States and China are currently ranked high." Shen Jun said. The United States aerogels are mainly used in aerospace, petrochemical and other fields, and gradually enter the consumer goods market. China's aerogels are now mainly used in high-speed rail, oil fields and other industries.
Allied market research company in June 2014, the global market value of aerogels was $0.2218 billion in 2013 and is estimated to reach $1.8966 billion by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 36.4 during the forecast period (from 2014-2020). With the continuous progress of aerogel materials in the exploration of new application fields, the market expects that the momentum of market growth will be further strengthened over time.
Research report stated that in 2010, the global insulation material market was estimated to be 32.1 billion US dollars, with an annual growth rate of 6.3 per cent in the future, reaching 55.6 billion US dollars by 2019. The industrial and equipment sectors accounted for about 1/3 of the total share, while the construction sector accounted for 2/3 of the total.
Aerogel material occupies the top part of the pyramid model of the whole insulation material market, and the scale in the whole insulation material market is almost negligible, which shows that the aerogel industry is still in the early stage, and at the same time indicates its future development space.
industry standards are being developed.
"Previously, the greater obstacle restricting the expansion of the aerogel market was the high price. Once the production cost of aerogel materials is significantly reduced, the market scale will expand sharply, the product sales will also expand rapidly, and it will revolutionize the traditional insulation. material." Aipeiai and deputy general manager Dong Haibing told Science and Technology Daily reporter.
Aibiai has been committed to improving the preparation process of aerogels, reducing costs, making them available for large-scale industrial production, stable product quality, and greatly reducing costs, making aerogels common industrial and civil The "insulation material" used in the field ".
The company's experiments showed that under the heating of a high-temperature spray gun of more than 1000 degrees Celsius, the traditional organic insulation materials burned out quickly in a few seconds, and the traditional inorganic insulation materials of the same thickness were burned in less than 1 minute. However, the company's aerogel board was broken down after 40 minutes. In addition to better fire resistance, aerogels only need 1/3-1/4 of the thickness of traditional inorganic materials to achieve the same thermal insulation effect.
"Although the unit price of aerogel products is higher than that of traditional insulation materials, the cost of using aerogel is lower considering the service life and construction cost." Dong Haibing said.
Shen Jun revealed that his team studied the application of silica aerogel in the field of building energy conservation, including product labeling, construction specifications and so on, in the newly concluded science and technology support project. "Aerogels should be promoted in this field soon."
In addition, in transportation, heat network pipeline construction, petroleum and petrochemical industries, the application of aerogels is becoming more and more extensive. "The hidden dangers of electric vehicles mainly come from the combustion or even explosion of electrolyte in lithium batteries. If the batteries are put on aerogel clothes, the coefficient will be greatly improved. Titanium oxide aerogel can isolate infrared and ultraviolet rays and decompose formaldehyde, which can be used to make reusable masks and air purification filter elements." Dong Haibing firmly believes that aerogel will become a big industry.
Dong Haibing hopes that my country can introduce relevant policies and standards to promote the development of this newly emerging industry. In this regard, Shen Jun said: "At present, some fake aerogels have appeared on the market, and the norms and standards really need to be implemented urgently. Nanjing Glass Fiber Research and Design Institute is currently developing relevant standards, including product standards, construction specifications and so on, which should be available by the end of this year."
original link: http://h.wokeji.com/jbsj/bb/201603/t20160328_2366213.shtml
