Aerogel is currently the lightest and best-quality thermal insulating material, with more than 90% of its weight being air. But the cloudy appearance of clouds means they are difficult to use as ' windows ', which is one of the reasons why heat escapes buildings.
The good news is that researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, have found a way to become transparent, with a focus on the use of by-products from beer brewing.
The new transparent aerogel is housed in a bathtub that is pressed against a glass plate. Trapping air is a key to thermal insulation.
Ordinary clothes are ventilated, but the surface area of the material such as wool and goose down is larger, which can accommodate more air, thus achieving a better warmth effect.
The main components of aerogel are air, which makes them excellent insulators and has been widely used in bricks, small houses, and winter jackets.
To turn them into windows, however, they have to consider their unique material structure:
Aerogel has a cross-intersecting solid material structure that produces billions of pores to absorb air, but also scatters a large amount of light so that they sometimes appear to be called ' Frozen smoke '.
Qingkun Liu with raw materials (from beer wort). To this end, the team began developing a more transparent aerogel.
It can not only be installed on the windows to allow light to pass through, but also to maintain the heat. The researchers turned to cellulose, a common plant sugar that could manipulate its molecules and connect them with uniform lattice patterns.
But the smartest thing is that they used the acquired liquid waste. As a byproduct of beer brewing, beer wort is usually discarded by the factory.
But after being recycled by the team, they added special bacteria to make cellulose from the beer wort in about two weeks. For materials on hand, the team can induce cellulose to self-assemble called nanofibers, which are then used to make gels.
The end result is that it is not only transparent, but highly heat resistant.
The raw material of this transparent aerogel is a ' byproduct ' of beer manufacturing. The team said the best case for Transparent aerogel was the film that was glued to the window.
It can greatly improve heat insulation, while increasing the thermal efficiency, the cost is lower. Research co-author Andrew Hess says the cost of replacing windows is high and we are currently envisioning a retrofit product.
It is similar to the peel and paste film that consumers buy at Home Depot and other shopping malls.
In addition, the technology has many other applications, including smart clothing, automotive insulation, and fire protection.
A new transparent Aerogel sample allows the window to become a better insulator. It is worth mentioning that these applications can even break out of the Earth.
A few months ago, the team won the 2018 Itech competition organised by NASA to use Aerogel as an otherworldly window insulator.
The study's communications author, Ivan Smalyukh, says transparency is a practical feature because you can use the gel on Windows and even use it in an alien habitat.
You can collect and store the sun's energy through insulation materials to protect yourself from the huge temperature fluctuations on Mars or on the moon.
