Re: [TSCM-L] Re: Aerogel now publicly available in sample quantities

I don't think it's that far off topic, especially when you consider an aerogel's IR filtering and acoustic insulation properties..

Some unique high frequency properties as well.

kondrak wrote:

This has been one of my areas of great interest.
 The manufacturing process involves evaporating an alcohol from the gel.
From:
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/aboutaerogel.html#aerogel

< http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/%7Eaerogel/aboutaerogel.html#aerogel >--fwd
Aerogel is made by drying the alcogel and extracting the liquid from the solid silica component.  If you have ever left Jell-O out of the refrigerator, you probably will have noticed that it shrunk and got fairly disgusting in the matter of a few days.  The same thing happens to alcogel when it is dried by evaporating the solvent off.  The evaporating liquid solvent causes the alcogel's solid silica component to collapse by capillary action.  This means that after the solvent has been completely taken out of the gel, the gel has collapsed and formed a dense solid that is a pitiful 10% of the original volume of the gel.  This solid is called xerogel (xero=hard, gel=gel) and is how they make things like contact lenses and high-purity lenses.
--end

Im waiting for someone to start selling stock in a company producing fireproof clothing out of it. Its also been mentioned as a repair for damage to the Shuttle in space, and ceramic/aerogel tiles have been produced.

Sorry if this is horribly OT, but this is a scientific breakthrough I'm extremely interested in, and after all most of us are scientists at heart on this list.


At 21:27 2/10/2006, you wrote:

http://www.unitednuclear.com/aerogel.htm

Aerogel is made from Silicon Dioxide, the same material as ordinary Glass, only 1,000 times less dense.

Aerogel (also called 'frozen smoke' because of its hazy blue appearance), is a truly remarkable material.

It is the lightest and lowest-density solid known to exist, and holds an unbelievable 15 entries in the Guinness Book of World  Records, including best insulator and lowest density solid.

Aerogel is composed of 99.8% air and is chemically similar to ordinary glass.

Being the world's lightest known solid, it weighs only three times that of air.

When handled, Aerogel feels like a very light, hard foam. Being chemically similar to glass, it also happens to shatter like glass, yet is incredibly strong structurally, and can support thousands of times its own weight. Theoretically, a block weighing less than a pound could support a weight of half a ton.

Due to its microstructure, Aerogel is a powerful desiccant, rapidly absorbing any moisture in your fingertips when held. This usually leaves some dry spots on the skin that disappear in a short time.

Aerogel's true strength is its incredible insulating properties. It negates just about any kind of energy transfer - thermal, electrical or acoustic.

A one-inch thick Aerogel window has the same insulation value as 15 panes of glass and trapped air - which means a conventional window would have to be ten-inches thick to equal a one-inch thick Aerogel window.

Aerogel's density is just 3 milligrams per cubic centimeter.  Its melting point is 2,200 degrees F (1,200 degrees C).

A large panel of Aerogel was most recently used by NASA in the Stardust mission, which successfully collected collect comet & interstellar dust samples & returned them to Earth. Previously, it was used in the Mars Pathfinder Rover to insulate its components from the large temperature swings on Mars.