1. Excellent flame retardant and thermal insulated palygorskite/wood fiber composite aerogels with improved mechanical properties
- Author
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Shijie Ding, Jing Chen, Zhou Xinyu, Jinbo Wang, Shan Yun, Zhu Yong, Tao Hu, Tingting Xu, and Huiran Jin
- Subjects
Materials science ,Composite number ,Palygorskite ,020101 civil engineering ,Geology ,Aerogel ,02 engineering and technology ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,0201 civil engineering ,Limiting oxygen index ,Thermal conductivity ,Geochemistry and Petrology ,medicine ,Thermal stability ,Fiber ,Composite material ,0210 nano-technology ,Porosity ,medicine.drug - Abstract
Clay aerogels have many attractive properties, such as low thermal conductivities, good thermal stabilities and low flammability. But the generally weak mechanical property severely restrains their practical applications. Incorporation of polymers into clay aerogel could achieve desirable strength, unfortunately, the fire resistance or insulating properties were sacrificed to some extent. In this work, fire-resistant palygorskite/wood fiber composite aerogels with low densities were prepared by an eco-friend freeze-drying method. In the aerogels, palygorskite contents were up to 80 wt% while only a small amount of wood fiber were used as reinforced filler. The composite aerogel had an array of porous structure with intertwined palygorskite fibers as pore walls, which resulted in a low thermal conductivity of 0.033 W/mK. In addition, the composite aerogel exhibited good mechanical strength with the Young's modulus up to 4.7 MPa while the density was lower than 0.08 g/cm3. Overall, an outstanding combination of excellent machinability, thermal stability, high limiting oxygen index, and prominent flame-retardant properties has been achieved in the composite aerogels. This work represents a significant progress of porous materials development and makes the practical applications of clay-based aerogel insulators realistic.
- Published
- 2020
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