Silica aerogel upscaling
In 2013, a one-pot production process was patented by Empa. This process minimizes the use of solvent and allows to produce silica aerogel granulate by ambient pressure drying within only 5 hours from start to finish. The production process consists of three steps: gelation, modification and ambient pressure drying. The production process was recently scaled up in a pilot reactor with a batch volume of 70 L. The aerogel granulate produced by this method has a thermal conductivity of 17.9 mW/(m.K), as low as that of commercially available granulate . Importantly, the new production process substantially reduces production cost, processing time and CO2 emissions during production.