Manufacturing of Curvilinear Shaped Aerogels

Aerogels are a highly porous material comprised of 90-99% air per unit volume. These materials exhibit low densities, large surface areas, and amorphous structures. Union College holds a patent for a Rapid Supercritical Extraction (RSCE) method for aerogel fabrication which involves the use of a hot press and steel molds. Currently, the Aerogel Laboratory at Union manufactures monolithic aerogel windows and monolithic test samples impregnated with catalytic metals for use in automobile exhaust systems. However, based on the aerogel production method used at Union, it is possible to manufacture a variety of shapes using different hot press mold designs. The goal of this project is to make curvilinear shaped aerogels. This has required the design of a new type of mold with two pieces and vent holes for the supercritical fluid. We designed a mold to make a corn-cob pipe shaped aerogel and performed extensive characterization work to ensure that it would be possible to achieve supercritical conditions in the mold. The pressure and temperature data recorded from the testing of the new mold revealed the pipe mold could produce an aerogel. However, we found that it was difficult to remove the resulting aerogel pipe. Continued efforts have been made to change the mold design to improve the quality of the fabricated aerogels, and to facilitate the extraction of the aerogel pipe from its chamber.