Aerogels are an amazing creation, one of the best thermal insulators known to Man, and yet they’re hardly used. The goal seems to be to create a version that’s transparent to the visible spectrum and use them for windows, yet why isn’t someone selling them for use as wall insulation? Given what they can do it seems logical to me that everyone would be rushing out to manufacture a version that one could use to insulate the walls of their house and the profits from that could be used to fund more research into making a transparent version of them. Any Dopers have any experience with this stuff?
no experience, only reading.
compared to fiberglass, aerogels are still pretty expensive to manufacture. so nobody’s gonna be insulating their houses with them anytime soon. sure, they’d insulate scads more efficiently, but any heating/cooling savings would be rather offset by the price of the aerogel.
not to say they’re prohibitively expensive, though. when aerogels were first introduceded in the early part of last century, by duPont or Monsanto or whoever the hell, they were used in some pretty stupid (mundane, not moronic) ways- in ink on cigarette boxes, in toothpastes, etc.
all in all, i’m with you. i love the stuff. two pots in every chicken, and aerogel in every garage.
jb
Regular insulation, as mentioned above is still cheaper. And most applications only need insulating as good as the usual materials provide. You don’t build a car body out of titanium simply because it is stonger, more flexible and never rusts, because it costs several times as much, and you don’t need those properties.
aerogels also have no mechanical strength, and cost probably 10-100* simple foam insulation, with little advantage in thermal savings. How one would get an aerogel into a wall cavity would be tricky, + the very fine silica dust is probably very bad for the lungs.
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- Aerogels aren’t used for much because it they aren’t kept completely sealed, they absorb atmospheric moisture fairly quickly and become brittle and crack and split. - DougC
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Yeah, and people don’t need cars that can go 200 MPH, but you can buy 'em. I can see someone with lots of money to throw around building a house that’s insulated with this stuff, as sort of a status symbol tht they can rub other people’s noses in. “Pfah, the insulation alone cost more than two years tuition at Harvard.”
Aerogels are so much more expensive than other insulating materials, and currently so impractical, as to pretty much rule out any commercial application, unless they could be made sexy to a large portion of the buying public. No one has bothered to even try, and so they remain a research and lab curiosity, for the most part.
I held some of the stuff at a science museum. It’s just mesmerizing. I had a piece of space shuttle tile once which was eery, but it didn’t hold a candle to aerogel.
Imagine putting your fingers in mid air, and squeezing them together, not until you feel something, but until you appear to be touching! I was completely fascinated. I’d pay $20 for a sample without thinking.
In terms of what it’s good for, as pointed out regular insulation is much better less cost. Also aerogel’s getting a little old now, what with molecular level advances in superconducting and nano-engineering. I don’t know how much of that they’ve incorporated, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find they’re behind the times.
I note that one of the OP’s cited sites, includes Cabot Corporation, just added to the list of companies supplying it. Hmmm, wonder if they have a samples page…
Shoot. Found a samples site at http://www.mkt-intl.com/aerogels/aerogel_order.html.
$110 for a random 1-2 cm piece.