At the University of Debrecen's Faculty of Technology (MK), they have recently investigated the thermal insulation properties of so-called fiber aerogels and their vacuumed forms. Aerogels are solid materials that have an extremely low density and are almost as light as air. Their solid skeletons are usually made of glass, ceramics, polymers or hybrid materials and their pores are filled with air. They have a number of special physical properties, including excellent thermal insulation.
Ákos Lakatos, professor at the DE MK and Ákos Szabó, MSc student at the faculty's Building Physics Laboratory, worked for almost a year with thermal insulation boards containing different fibrous silica-based core materials. In a vacuum, they made insulation panels of their own design and then tested their thermal conductivity. Microscopic images were taken of the changes that occurred during the experiments.
- After the removal of air, the thermal conductivity of microtherm and pyrogel was reduced by more than 15 percent, while that of spaceloft and slentex was about 8 and 2 percent respectively, meaning that each material had better thermal insulation properties after vacuum treatment. In this study, we used the results as a basis for energy calculations and also presented a comparison of the carbon footprint of the different materials," said Ákos Lakatos.
The professor stressed that these thermal insulation panels could achieve significant energy savings and could be used, for example, as additional insulation in building systems, vehicles, but also in the healthcare sector, for example, in the walls of refrigeration boxes.
Ákos Lakatos believes that their research will eventually become part of the faculty's teaching. After winning the Publication Award, the two experts will continue their research, with Ákos Szabó's results winning first place in the Technical Section of this year's National Scientific Student Conference and recently earning him support from the University Research Scholarship Programme.
Details of the research have been published in the prestigious technical journal Case Studies in Thermal Engineering in English and the paper can be read in full by clicking here.
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