Session
2024 Poster Session
Location
Salt Lake Community College Westpointe Campus, Salt Lake City, UT
Start Date
5-6-2024 9:55 AM
Description
Aerogels are a fascinating material that function as great insulators. Nasa has partnered with Aspen Aerogels to produce a commercially viable product that aims to tackle a variety of problems such as space shuttle insulation, space particle collection, thermal safety, and cryogenic applications. The main objective of our project is to reproduce an aerogel blanket using standard lab conditions and chemicals. We will be producing the blanket using the silica gel process. We will compare properties of durability, cost, and thermal conductivity. We plan to pinpoint a procedure that provides the most cost effective, durable, and thermally conductive material under standard lab conditions. The procedure under investigation involved subcritical drying. We applied gels over three fabrics to test the adherence of the gel and to test the success of the subcritical method. While our experiments in ensuring that a gel can be produced, adhered, and successfully performed as an insulator, there is much left to be investigated in the process design. There are ample opportunities to redesign the process to allow for a cost-effective method of production such as recycling the solvents and automatic solvent exchange. Also, we directly adhered our gels onto the fabrics which did not produce a satisfactory result in durability. Our next method of adherence is to apply aerogel particles to a silicone based adhesive to apply on the fabrics. There is also the ample opportunity to investigate wet spinning, extrusion, and supercritical drying as more cost-effective and successful methods at producing a high quality insulator. Overall, the field of aerogels is growing and will play a larger role in the future as we look to innovate methods of insulation in advancing technological fields.
Chemical Synthesis of Aerogel Fabric Under Standard Lab Conditions
Salt Lake Community College Westpointe Campus, Salt Lake City, UT
Aerogels are a fascinating material that function as great insulators. Nasa has partnered with Aspen Aerogels to produce a commercially viable product that aims to tackle a variety of problems such as space shuttle insulation, space particle collection, thermal safety, and cryogenic applications. The main objective of our project is to reproduce an aerogel blanket using standard lab conditions and chemicals. We will be producing the blanket using the silica gel process. We will compare properties of durability, cost, and thermal conductivity. We plan to pinpoint a procedure that provides the most cost effective, durable, and thermally conductive material under standard lab conditions. The procedure under investigation involved subcritical drying. We applied gels over three fabrics to test the adherence of the gel and to test the success of the subcritical method. While our experiments in ensuring that a gel can be produced, adhered, and successfully performed as an insulator, there is much left to be investigated in the process design. There are ample opportunities to redesign the process to allow for a cost-effective method of production such as recycling the solvents and automatic solvent exchange. Also, we directly adhered our gels onto the fabrics which did not produce a satisfactory result in durability. Our next method of adherence is to apply aerogel particles to a silicone based adhesive to apply on the fabrics. There is also the ample opportunity to investigate wet spinning, extrusion, and supercritical drying as more cost-effective and successful methods at producing a high quality insulator. Overall, the field of aerogels is growing and will play a larger role in the future as we look to innovate methods of insulation in advancing technological fields.