The Amazing Properties of Aerogel 556
RideMax writes "We all know NASA is using a substance called 'aerogel' in the Stardust spacecraft to catch pieces of the Wild-2 comet. The NYT is running an article about some other amazing aerogel properties. My favorite quote: 'It's the lowest density of any solid, and it has the highest thermoinsulation properties. Though it would be very expensive, you could take a two- or three-bedroom house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle. But eventually the house would become too hot.'" We've looked at Aerogel before.
Really? (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a thought, maybe some slashdotter knows, I've read the aerogel facts from the JPL page but it doesn't mention anything about this.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
I believe Aerogel is an open celled matrix, meaning that the eventually the hydrogen (especially hydrogen) would leak out causing a block of the stuff to return to the ground.
I suppose it would be possible to seal a block of aerogel in some sort of polymer making for a structurally solid balloon.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Really? (Score:3, Informative)
The house would warm up (Score:5, Funny)
More pictures here (Score:4, Informative)
http://eande.lbl.gov/ECS/aerogels/saphoto.htm
Some of the pics are really amazing. Cool stuff!!!
See it for yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
-If
Re:More pictures here (Score:3, Funny)
"This aerogel composite contains iron oxide introduced using chemical vapor infiltration. Nobody knows whose hand this is."
Too much (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems to me that in this case, having a few lights left on or PC with a hot CPU left running would quickly make things uncomfortable
What if it was only used to certain walls where leakage was most common?
Re:Too much (Score:5, Insightful)
What if it was only used to certain walls where leakage was most common?
Or perhaps to insulate between windowpanes? Since it's more or less transparent, it'll let the light in, but not heat out...
Re:Too much (Score:3, Interesting)
In practical use; however, it would be better since it would last longer. I wonder though how it would stand up to the light and IR bombarding it though..
Re:Too much (Score:2)
Re:Too much (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too much (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too much (Score:5, Funny)
I should have known this before I proposed to my girlfriend.
Re:Too much (Score:2)
Aerogel is a good insulator because it's made of air. If air does not circulate, it acts as a wonderful insulator.
That's why double glass windows work so well. I doubt they would work better with aerogel (except being dust free...
Re:Too much (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too much (Score:2, Insightful)
Very expensive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'm missing something, but elsewhere they said "But, Dr. Tsou said, the material was not used much, except in powdered form as a nontoxic anti-caking agent for food."
If it's so expensive, what kind of food exactly were they using it on? Caviar?
ask Monsanto (Score:3, Interesting)
Paint is cheap, paintings aren't (Score:4, Insightful)
Iron is pretty cheap too, but a single perfect crystal of appreciable size starts to make Platinum look positively affordable. Or graphite to diamond.
It's not so much the atoms that make many things expensive so much as how they're put together.
Re:Very expensive? (Score:5, Informative)
Regardless, the cost of Aerogel is in its manufacture, not its ingredients. Aerogel is actually just a crystalline structure that forms when SiO2 molecules are suspended in ethanol. The trick is figuring out how to get the ethanol out and replace it with air after the lattices form. This process is called supercritical drying and involves pushing liquid CO2 though the structure at very high pressures. Actually the entire process of how to make the stuff can be found here. [lbl.gov] It's suprisingly simple. Besides the supercritical drying bit, it seems almost like something you could make yourself.
Re:Powdered Aerogel = Diatomaceous Earth (Score:3, Interesting)
Diatomaceous earth is 100% natural microscopic glass shards. Being microscopic glass shards they are an excellent insecticide. The shards pierce the insect's shell and through capilarry action, they suck out all the internal fluids drying the bug to a corpse. However, the shards are so small that humans can ingest them without fear of harm.
So if you
Re:Too much (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is ventilation. Even apart from the issue that you'd suffocate, houses that are too insulated are almost guaranteed get mold problems. You need a constant airflow, and that's where you get the major heat loss. Of course, various techniques like heat exchangers exist to ameliorate this, but unfortunately the technology for 100% efficiency is not quite there yet.
Re:Too much (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is ventilation. Even apart from the issue that you'd suffocate, houses that are too insulated are almost guaranteed get mold problems. You need a constant airflow, and that's where you get the major heat loss.
THe solution is refrigeration. :) I posted this elsewhere, but decided to come back and respond to you where it would be more useful. ;)
You need an intake baffle and an exhaust baffle. ON the intake baffle you put a condensor and on the exhaust baffle you put an evaporator. Pump freon through the system, of course. You also need fans to keep the air flow going properly.
So, freon evaporates in the evaporator, sucking up heat from the air that is being blown out of the house. Then it gets pumped and compressed over to the condensor, where it it condenses into liquid and dumps its heat, right into the air blowing into the house. The heat is kept in the house that way.
Now, I realize the goal is energy-efficiency, and adding another refrigerator to your electric bill probably isn't energy-efficient, but it's my opinion that there's a solution to the efficient problems of air conditioning, I just haven't spent a lot of time on it--yet. :)
Re:Too much (Score:4, Interesting)
Essentially, they were causing a natural convection in the house with a trombe wall [wikipedia.org] with a vent window at the top that could be opened and closed to control temperature. In combination with this they were drawing outside air through ventilator tubes buried in the earth near the house. This was supposed to "earth temper" the air to ~68F before it entered the house - cool in winter, hot in summer.
They also mentioned that the louvered windows could be made automatic with a system of balances using fluids with appropriate boiling points (like the drinky-bird from the 70s).
I wonder how well this actually works?
R-factor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:R-factor? (Score:5, Interesting)
"A single one-inch thick windowpane of silica aerogel is equivalent to the insulation provided by 20 windowpanes of glass (R-20 insulation factor)."
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History [axonchisel.net].
Re:R-factor? (Score:3, Informative)
also known as...... (Score:5, Funny)
Aerogel Facts and a Picture (Score:5, Interesting)
- It is 99.8% Air
- Provides 39 times more insulating than the best fiberglass insulation
- Is 1,000 times less dense than glass
- Was used on the Mars Pathfinder rover
And a cool picture [nasa.gov] of aerogel in somebody's hand.--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History [axonchisel.net].
Aerogel FAQ (Score:5, Informative)
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History [axonchisel.net].
Re:Aerogel Facts and a Picture (Score:5, Informative)
Cool picture? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cool picture? (Score:3, Funny)
(kidding!)
-Zipwow
Re:Aerogel Facts (Score:3, Informative)
In any transparent material particles will emit light in a cone around their trajectory when they are travelling faster than the speed of light in that material (analogous to sonic boom produced by plane going faster than speed of sound). From measuring the angle the light is emitted at we can work out the velocity. The range of velocities we are sensitive to depends on the refractive index of
Re:Aerogel Facts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I Got To Touch It (Score:3, Funny)
I recall that although it was extremely light, it fell quickly when I dropped it from hand to the other
Welcome to gravity, its pretty much the same for everybody on earth.
"Aerogel": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:4, Funny)
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a solid material happens to be so light, showing remarkable properties like near-perfect insulation, is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans.
Likenesses to other successes (Score:3, Interesting)
Aerogel? (Score:3, Funny)
balsa wood in the right structure can do as much.. (Score:5, Interesting)
That particular example doesn't seem that impressive, I used to build balsa wood structures that would hold over 600 lbs(~270kg), with only 15 grams of balsa wood and glue, with strict rules on how it could be built. The world record is somewhere in the 1500 lb mark with a similar weight of wood.
Re:balsa wood in the right structure can do as muc (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple's Design Team Will Be Interested (Score:2)
pssh, that's childs play (Score:2)
Are prices coming down? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kjella
Re:Are prices coming down? (Score:4, Informative)
I was curious about the prices, too.
At What's an aerogel? [post-gazette.com], there is this:
Hot-aero? or will prices really come down? (Score:4, Informative)
Anyvbody with some industry knowledge care to comment on the chances of the prices coming down? This material sounds like it would be phenomonal to help with insulation in industrial and domestic applications, do a world of good to sort out global warming. The byline about a candle heating a house seems a bit of hyperbole but if it's even in the same ballpark as this then imagine the savings people would make on heating / air conditioning.
Realistically, is it likely to become affordable? like teflon went from space product to saucepans? or is it like space travel (by the 1970s we'll all be travelling to the moon on our holidays for no more than the price of a holiday in Florida...)?
my god... (Score:5, Interesting)
improves the desalination of seawater plants a thousand fold...
my god....all we have to do is find a cheap or easier way to produce (like we do with virtually everything in the world in the free enterprise system) and we can offer virtually energy free habitats (excess heat can be channelled into electronics and solar can pick up the rest) - as well as a cheap water supply for the world...
christ...someone get me some chemists and a few venture capitalists.....this is incredible... - and it's real and now...not like those carbon nanofibers people want to use to create space elevators...
pax
RB
Re:my god... (Score:2)
If only I could find a cheap and easy way to produce money...
Re:my god... (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine said that the reason aerogel has the light bluish tint to it is that the crystal structure does not form perfectly due to earth's gravity. Aerogel made in zero-G should, in theory, be completely clear.
Now, if we added a module to the ISS to make transparent aerogel, the ISS would fund itself! I mean, think about it... with how much it costs per cubic inch of the tinted stuff, and the fact that the ISS would have a monopoly on all transparent aerogel produced, you could charge practically whatever you wanted, and sell it to governments around the world.
Re:my god... (Score:3, Funny)
How would you find it?
Re:my god... (Score:3, Insightful)
Take the candle from the example in the story, and replace it with a block of ice
Re:my god... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, and the CO2. And the water vapour. And whatever toxics that leak in miniscule amounts from materials inside.
You dont have to imagine it, it's been tried. It was found to profoundly suck, as people got sick and the houses molded or rotted.
The technology for building houses with perfect insulation has been here for a long time. Unfortunately, the problem isnt the insulation anymore, the problem is the ventilation. But come up with a highly efficient and cheap heat exchanger system and you could solve that too
Re:my god... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:my god... (Score:3, Informative)
Untrue. We're having to build leaks into the houses now since the house wraps, spray-in foam insulation, and other technologies are essentially impermeable (the house wraps are actually intentionally permeated for instance). That's why a lot of new homes have major mold problems. Older homes are another issue, but you're not going to use aerogel insulation on them without a major reconstruction project anyway.
Even if we had it in the walls,
For sale (Score:2, Informative)
Re:For sale (Score:5, Informative)
From What's an aerogel? [post-gazette.com]:
That is nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
The Amazing Properties of Aerogel? (Score:2, Funny)
You know what I'm talkin' about. *Wink*Wink* Nudge*Nudge* :P
It is subject to shattering, catasrophically (Score:5, Interesting)
Q: What happens if I touch it?
A: Silica aerogel is semi-elastic because it returns to its original form if slightly deformed. If further deformed, a dimple will be created. However, if the elastic limit is exceeded, it will shatter catastrophically, like glass.
Off Topic, But.... (Score:2)
*rimshot*
Re:It is subject to shattering, catasrophically (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It is subject to shattering, catasrophically (Score:3, Informative)
$35 on eBay. [ebay.com]
Photos (Score:5, Interesting)
What people don't know about aerogel (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been some close research into using substances like aerogel to improve processor speeds. Apparently the substances can be used as very efficient insulators between traces and components. This is because aerogel and substances like it are mostly made of air, which has a very high dielectric constant so aerogel itself is a very good insulator.
It's better described here [nasa.gov]
more on aerogel (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm sure aerogel has many pracitcal uses (trying not to fall asleep here), the "cool" factor is also very high. I've seen some of her samples, and everything the article says is correct. It's so light it feels like the wind could take it; in fact, if you drop it in water, I think it dissolves. Since the material is so expensive, it's obviously something you don't want to do, since every last piece is precious.
As you might imagine, a material that's ultra-light and 'holographic' has artistic applications, too. The "brain" image made it onto the cover of Nature neuroscience, and wouldn't look out of place in a design magazine. When you see it up close, the image seems to be 'embedded' in the material, even though it's so light you could easily crush it with your hand. The airiness and delicacy of the material makes the image that much more striking.While we're all attuned to the utilitarian value of materials like this, it's always neat to see what people outside of engineering can do with them.
Re:more on aerogel (Score:4, Funny)
"[My] interests are: shuz, aerogel, Philip Treacy hats, make-up artist Topolino, and vinyl dipped pacifier nipples."
This defies any sort of comment, so I won't even try.
Where to buy? (Score:5, Informative)
For a more varied selection (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where to buy? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where to buy? (Score:3, Informative)
Emphasis on 'very expensive' (Score:4, Informative)
I'll let someone else figure out how expensive an entire house would be to insulate.
Note that this isn't even the really good stuff (the average density of the commercial stuff is only 99.9% air, while the hi-tech versions used by NASA can be as high as 99.99% air or more)
Re:Emphasis on 'very expensive' (Score:2)
Re:Emphasis on 'very expensive' (Score:3, Informative)
If the interior of aerogel were a vacuum, you could potentially create a solid that is lighter than air (although its structural stability and strength would be reduced)
Re:Emphasis on 'very expensive' (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I'll bite.
More miracle heating/cooling (Score:4, Interesting)
First, some background on black body radiation. All matter radiates some light, based on its temperature. By basic thermodynamics, the amount of radiation that a color of matter absorbs in a given frequency range (as opposed to reflects) is directly proportional to how much it radiates (as compared to a perfect black body of the same temperature).
The sun only radiates on a fairly small set of frequencies, and that set is very different from the frequencies at which a black body at room temperature radiates. If you build a panel of a material that is perfectly absorbent in the frequencies on which the Sun radiates (perfect black body), but reflects in the remaining frequencies (perfectly white on the blackbody frequencies of room temperature), it will lose very little heat to radiation, but absorb a lot from the sun, and it'll get very hot. If you take a body that reflects radiation in the colors the sun emits (white), but absorbs/radiates elsewhere (black), it'll get very, very cool, even in bright sunlight. You can get pretty close to the full 1000W/m^2 of heating (level of Sun's radiation hitting the earth). In cooling, you get pretty close to the ideal from Stefan's Law (http://www.egglescliffe.org.uk/physics/astronomy
This means that you can theoretically heat or cool a house with just a painted square on the roof a few square meters in area, if you could just create a material of the right color.
Problem is the guy who came up with this (and showed it to me) was a physicist and not a chemist, and had no idea how one would go about creating a material whose color was that well controlled.
Still a nifty concept, eh? If you could make this, it would save a ton of energy, since you'd no longer need to burn gas to heat and use electricity to cool -- just flip a panel on your roof, and the temperature changes (although for heating, the house would need to be well enough insulated to last the night).
Zero-G manufacturing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ref: The Third Industrial Revolution by G. Harry Stine.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Bulletproof? (Score:2, Interesting)
Call me tight but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Call me tight but... (Score:5, Funny)
The real question... (Score:2, Funny)
Link me up (Score:3, Informative)
"The Flower" [lbl.gov]
"Six Aerogel Nanocomposites" [lbl.gov]
"Magnetic Aerogel" [lbl.gov]
"Photoluminescent Silicon on Silica" [lbl.gov]
"Carbon Nanostructure in Aerogel" [lbl.gov]
General Info / Main [lbl.gov]
Possible military application (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possible military application (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wear it and burn to death within an hour more like.
You could always fill your pants with dry ice before putting it on, that might buy you another hour.
Highest density? (Score:3, Funny)
Ok, so if aerogel has the lowest density of any solid, what has the highest density?
Right now I'm thinking that it's either corporate America's CxO's, or perhaps whoever keeps watching all of these dumbass reality shows on tv.
Aerogel and supercapacitors (Score:4, Informative)
Fun for robotic projects and such. Many common devices are using super-capacitors like these. Those tiny remote control cars and those battery-free flashlights are a couple examples.
Re:Some more info (Score:2)
Re:Some more info (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It it heats that much... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:a candle? that's not correct! (Score:2)
And they weren't saying the entire house should be made out of aerogel (although doing so would provide an interesting peep show for those outside) just that it could be insulated with it. You know, the same way we do with houses now. The walls aren't made out of that pink fiberglas
Re:a candle? that's not correct! (Score:2)
That is true -- in the US. This is not the case in Europe. Here heating is transfellered with water. I recall when I used to live in the Bay Area and we had one of those air blowing heaters. Completely inefficient!
To be fair: of course the blowing air can heat a room, but it will not stay warm long. In the aerogel article they probably tested the heat conductivity of the aerogel, looked
Re:a candle? that's not correct! (Score:2)
It's possible to heat the house with a candle then, it would just have to be airtight.
The question is, would the house warm up before you ran out of oxygen?
Re:a candle? that IS correct! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, sure, anybody can point out the obvious "if you have a crack in your house" stuff, but the idea is still valid. So, don't go pulling out pivnert from 10th grade chemistry and using that as your basis for second-guessing an illustrative statement.
However, your house would STILL get too hot, even using PV = nRT. V here is constant. R, of course, is the Rieberg constant, the value of which I don't know off-hand. As long as no air leaks out, then as T goes up, P goes up accordingly. But T is on an absolute scale. Kelvins, here. 293.15 K is room temperature, 20 degrees C, and if you heat that up to 30 degrees C, 303.15 K is, in terms of proportionality, not too much of an increase, but hotter than is comfortable, i.e. too hot. Then particles, due to the pressure differential between outside and inside, want to leak out that crack. And what's happened? THE TEMPERATURE HASN'T DECREASED. n in PV = nRT has gone down in order to bring P down to atmospheric pressure outside. Oh, dear, T is higher, and nothing's leaking out! This, silly head, is why it's possible to heat a house in the first place. By your reasoning, a house could never be a different temperature than outside! Which, thank goodness, isn't the case.
And then, of course, "as a matter of fact," the air is exactly what keeps it hot, and any other thermally insulative materials, i.e. fiberglass or aerogel. When you heat up a house, you run air into a furnace, heat it up, and then pump it through the rest of the house. A candle would heat up the air immediately above it (rising products from chemical reaction) and that air diffuses throughout the house, heating it up. Just like your furnace. True, there's radiative heating from the candle as well, but compare the difference in heat when you stick your finger an inch above a candle vs. an inch to the side of it. Radiative heating is universally dispersive. Convective goes straight up. BIG difference between the two there. Oh, well, it looks like a candle COULD heat up the house insulated with aerogel.
Yes, I am a physicist.
Re:Can't wait for the weaponized form... (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a minuite.....
True, but (Score:3, Insightful)
What I have not seen is the application in areas that weight would make a difference, cars, planes, and maybe even clothes.
In clothes, you can have the equivlent in a down jacket in the thinkness of a windbreaker. It would be light as a feature, and not be subject do damage by exteme normal wear.
Of course, everyone on /. forgets that even if it is a great insulator, you don't ha
Re:Amazing stuff... (Score:5, Informative)