Introduction:
Industry experts believe that petrochemical industry is the largest downstream application field of aerogel, and the entry of Sinopec, petrochina and other heads is also an affirmation of the application prospect of aerogel in the petrochemical field.
Aerogel was mainly used in the middle and upstream fields such as aerospace, military industry, and national defense in the early days, and then gradually expanded to downstream fields such as petrochemical, industrial, construction, and transportation.
In the downstream field, the application of aerogel in the petrochemical pipeline is the most bright. Let's not talk about the data, there are already a number of domestic petroleum and petrochemical companies using aerogel for pipeline pipeline insulation, which will bring broad market demand for aerogel whether it is a stock or an incremental market.
The temperature of the petrochemical pipeline system is easy to be too high during work, and may even cause damage to nearby objects, so the work of heat preservation and insulation is very important. In the selection of insulation materials, people tend to heat insulation with both fire and moisture-proof products, and the past high use of materials such as polyurethane, glass wool, etc., due to insufficient hydrophobic capacity or temperature resistance to improve, can not meet the needs of pipeline insulation, so that the service life is short, which brings about the cost of replacing materials and affects the normal use of pipelines.
The thermal insulation material with stronger thermal insulation performance and more advanced technology has become a key to the thermal insulation of petrochemical pipelines.
Compared with traditional thermal insulation materials, the thermal conductivity of aerogel felt products used in petrochemical pipelines is only 1/3 to 1/5 of traditional thermal insulation materials, and the thermal insulation capacity is 2 to 8 times that of traditional thermal insulation materials.
In the academic paper "Application and Performance Analysis of silica aerogel insulation felt" published in Qilu Petrochemical Journal, the author introduced the effect of silica aerogel insulation felt on pipe insulation and energy saving transformation, and confirmed that after adopting silica aerogel felt for high temperature pipes, the surface temperature of pipes decreased significantly, and the energy saving effect was obvious.
In this paper, the traditional high-temperature glass wool felt insulation material used in the atmospheric pressure coking unit of Sinopec Tahe Refining and Chemical Company is compared with the silica aerogel felt combined with single-sided aluminum foil glass fiber cloth insulation material used in the subsequent transformation. Two advantages of aerogel felt are highlighted:
(1) The heat loss of the pipeline was reduced by 34.66% after the aerogel felt scheme was adopted;
(2) The temperature difference at the beginning and end of the thermal pipe is significantly lower than that of traditional insulation materials, and the thickness of the insulation layer is reduced by more than 50% compared with traditional insulation materials.
This advantage is due to the nanoporous structure of the aerogel. The pore size of aerogel is lower than the average free path of air molecules at atmospheric pressure, which can make the air molecules in the aerogel pores nearly static, avoiding the convective heat transfer of air. The very low bulk density of aerogel and the curved path of the nanonetwork structure also prevent the heat conduction between gaseous and solid states, and the tendency of "infinite" void walls can minimize the heat radiation. Through the combined action of three aspects, the path of heat transfer is almost blocked, so that the aerogel can achieve a very outstanding thermal insulation effect.

The low thermal conductivity is the main advantage of aerogel. For example, the thermal conductivity of traditional thermal insulation materials will rise and increase with the ambient temperature and humidity, in order to meet the requirements of not exceeding the specified maximum allowable heat loss, it is necessary to increase the thickness of thermal insulation materials.
The aerogels can achieve pipe insulation with a smaller thickness under the same thermal conductivity. At the same time, the high hydrophobic rate of aerogel felt can also keep the material itself intact and extend the service life; This also reduces the cost of replacement and maintenance during the use of traditional insulation materials.