Introduction:
Why are most aerogel composite products on the market? What forms or categories do they come in? What are the advantages? With these questions, this article will describe the common forms of aerogel composite products and applicable scenarios, advantages.
Most of the aerogel materials used in the field of petrochemical industry and new energy are aerogel composite products, such as aerogel felt and aerogel coatings.
In fact, because the strength of the aerogel material itself is low and the brittleness is high, this feature can not meet our daily use scenarios. In order to overcome this problem, it is necessary to modify aerogel materials to give different properties of aerogel materials.
At present, the most common method of aerogel material modification is to add dopants or reinforcing materials to prepare composite materials. There are usually two preparation methods, one is to add doping materials before the gel process, the other is to prepare aerogel particles or powders, and then add doping materials and binder, and then make a secondary formed complex by molding or injection molding.

For example, aerogel is compounded with glass fiber, ceramic fiber or carbon fiber to improve the binding force and structural stability of the system, so that the surface is not easy to crack and powder. Common products such as aerogel glass fiber felt are composite products derived from aerogel modification.
The composite of aerogel matrix materials with higher strength and toughness materials can improve the strength of the whole material system and expand more application fields. Different scene needs have derived more aerogel composite products to meet the needs of fire prevention and heat insulation in many fields.
Aerogel felt
Aerogel felt is a kind of aerogel composite product with large output, wide application and mature technology. It has the characteristics of soft, easy to cut, low density, fire prevention, overall hydrophobic, green environmental protection, etc. It can replace glass fiber products, asbestos insulation felt, silicate fiber products and other traditional flexible insulation materials which are not environmentally friendly and have poor thermal insulation performance. Aerogel felt is mainly used for thermal insulation of industrial pipes, storage tanks, industrial furnace bodies, power plants and other fields. Studies have shown that the thermal insulation effect of aerogel felt is 2-5 times that of traditional thermal insulation materials, and the thickness is only a fraction of that of traditional materials under the conditions of the same thermal insulation effect.
Aerogel coating
In the traditional insulation materials, coating is a very important class of products, which plays an irreplaceable role in many fields. Aerogel coatings have lower thermal conductivity than traditional coatings, and have good thermal insulation, fire prevention and hydrophobic effects. Aerogel coatings in the field of building fire protection will have a larger incremental market.

Aerogel powder
The history of aerogel industrialization began with aerogel powder. Aerogel powder can mostly be used as a filler function, based on its durable heat resistance and other properties, can be used as industrial pipe thermal insulation filler, building thermal insulation coating, fire retardant coating additives, thermal insulation plate filler and so on.

Aerogel plate
In fact, one of the main differences between felt and board is only the difference in hardness, felt has flexibility and can be curled, and the board has a certain stiffness and is not easy to bend. The main application of the board is the thermal insulation of large equipment and the thermal insulation of energy-saving interior and exterior walls of future buildings. Aerogels are often used in industrial furnaces, resistance furnaces, electromagnetic induction heating furnaces, mold holding furnaces, experimental furnaces and other fields of flat, square shape heat preservation and insulation.

The above are the more common aerogel composite insulation products in the market at present, in addition, there are aerogel composite products in the form of cloth, paper and other forms. This is mainly used in some special needs areas, such as aerogel cloth is mainly in the field of clothing, shoes and hats, aerogel paper (thin felt) is mainly used in battery insulation and some areas with very small space or very thin pipe diameter.