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Fumed silica based thermal insulating composite is a novel nanoporous material with excellent thermal insulating performance. However, shrinkage at higher temperatures (>800 °C) is a great challenge in application. In this work, fumed silica based thermal insulating composite was prepared by a dry molding method and fumed alumina was introduced to improve high-temperature thermal stability of the composite. The result shows volume shrinkage can decrease from 18.49% to 2.61% at 1000 °C when 20 wt% fumed alumina is added as an inhibitor. Thermal shrinkage inhibition mechanism was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. The models of fumed silica and fumed alumina super cells were built and mean square displacement (MSD) was calculated. The result indicates MSD of fumed silica is 0.198 A2 at 1000 °C while that of fumed alumina is only 0.0151 A2. In addition, thermal insulating property was comprehensively studied and the effect of fumed alumina on thermal conductivity was analyzed. The result shows this composite has excellent thermal insulating performance with thermal conductivity of 0.052 W/m·K at 800 °C and the introduction of fumed alumina has almost no effect on thermal insulating property. This work can provide theoretical guidelines for the choice of shrinkage inhibitor.

Nanoporous thermal insulating composites of fumed silica, opacifier, and fiber have been prepared by a dry molding method. SiC is adopted as an opacifier to improve thermal insulating performance at higher temperatures where radiation heat transfer plays an important role in entire heat transfer system. Radiative heat attenuation mechanisms have been illuminated by calculating thermal radiation optical parameters including scattering, absorption, and attenuation factors. The result shows fumed silica has low attenuation factor in infrared wavelength range, only 0.00188 for infrared radiation with a wavelength of 3.14 μm. The introduction of SiC can remarkably restrain radiative heat transfer, and the maximum attenuation factor reaches up to 5.848 for infrared radiation with a wavelength of 8.646 μm. The effect of SiC particle size on thermal radiation optical parameters is also studied. The choice of SiC particle size should match up with serving temperature of this insulation. In addition, thermal conductivity measurement has been employed to verify the accuracy of calculation results. Thermal conductivity can significantly decrease from 0.119 to 0.041 W/(m K) at 773 K when 25 wt% SiC (0.877 μm) is added into the composites.

Developing nanoporous thermal insulation materials is an effective method for solving energy consumption problems. In this study, fumed silica based thermal insulating composite was prepared using a novel dry molding method. Thermal conductivity was measured using a guarded hot plate method in the steady state. The results indicated that this composite exhibited excellent thermal insulating performance, achieving an ultra-low thermal conductivity of 0.0205 W/mK at 100 °C. By analyzing the microstructure using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), we found that the fiber surface was modified by a 12 μm-thick layer of fumed silica particles that reduced solid heat transfer. However, at high temperatures, thermal insulating performance decreased rapidly, and thermal conductivity reached up to 0.119 W/mK at 500 °C. Based on this problem, a heat transfer model was constructed to explain micro-nano scale heat transfer mechanisms of this composite. The results indicated that gas-solid coupled thermal conductivity occupied a large proportion of 78.3% at 100 °C, but the value was only 0.015 W/mK. As the serving temperature increased, radiative heat transfer gradually occupied the dominant position in total heat transfer. Radiative thermal conductivity reached up to 0.101 W/mK at 500 °C, which was approximately 93.3% of total thermal conductivity. Therefore, it was apparent that the increase in radiative heat transfer was the main cause of the decline in thermal insulating performance at high temperatures. Additionally, the effect of the fiber mass ratio on thermal conductivity was investigated at various temperatures. Empirical and simulated data were compared, and the results revealed that the heat transfer model was basically consistent with experimental findings, achieving a mean error of only 4.78%.

This work investigated thermal stability of fumed silica based thermal insulating composites prepared by dry molding technology. The results showed that the composites could keep excellent thermal stability at the temperatures below 800 °C. However, when the samples were used at higher temperatures (>800 °C), the volume shrinkage increased sharply, which directly led to a serious deformation and then affected thermal insulating properties in applications. The utilization of fumed alumina could significantly improve thermal stability of the composites. When 5 wt.% fumed alumina was added, the volume shrinkage decreased from 10.49% to 3.47% at 1000 °C. The desirable results would be achieved by adjusting the amount of fumed alumina according to practical using temperature. In addition, field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were employed to characterize the microstructure and phase transformations of the composites treated at different temperatures.