Technical Background

(1) Technical research background

Thermal insulation materials play a huge role in energy saving and consumption reduction in thermal power, petrochemical, cement, steel, furnaces, building and other fields. Using thermal insulation materials with better energy-saving effect to insulate pipelines and equipment can effectively reduce energy consumption.

At present, thermal insulation materials are mainly divided into traditional insulation materials and nanoporous insulation materials. Traditional insulation materials can be divided into inorganic insulation materials and organic insulation materials according to materials. Organic insulation materials have low thermal conductivity, but need to be replaced frequently due to flammability, low strength, being easy to aging and short service life. Inorganic insulation materials have relatively high thermal conductivity, and their thickness need to be increased to improve the thermal insulation effect; they occupy large space and have high water absorption. Nanoporous insulation materials are divided into disordered nanoporous insulation materials and ordered mesoporous insulation materials. The disordered nanoporous insulation materials save energy, is nonflammable, and have low thermal conductivity, only less than half of that of traditional materials under the same working condition (200~500℃), but they are expensive. As upgraded products of disordered nanoporous insulation materials, mesoporous materials have ordered nanoporous structure and better thermal insulation performance, their high-temperature resistance is greatly improved while having lower thermal conductivity, their higher long-term service temperatures are 650℃ and 1200℃ respectively, and they have such advantages as energy saving, space saving, auxiliary material saving, being economic and safe, wide application scenarios, and low maintenance cost.

For the “energy-saving technology of mesoporous insulation materials” developed by UniNano Advanced Materials Co., Ltd., a new green and water-based production process is adopted to prepare mesoporous insulation materials without generation of organic waste water; this technology achieves new unique pore channel structure and strong thermal stability, breaking through the temperature resistance limit of disordered nanoporous materials which is 550℃; this technology solves such sore points as too high preparation cost, insufficient high-temperature resistance and large pollution of existing disordered nanoporous insulation materials.

(2) Main purpose of this technology

The energy-saving technology of mesoporous insulation materials is suitable for the energy-saving technology transformation of insulation materials.

Industry Evaluation

(1) Awards

1) This technology was selected into the National Recommended Catalogue of Industrial Energy-Saving Technologies and Equipment and the National Guidelines on Industrial Energy-Saving Technology Application prepared by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020.

2) This technology won Jiangsu “First Prize of Energy Science and Technology Progress Award” in 2019.

(2) Science and technology assessment

On June 16, 2020, this technology was appraised by an appraisal committee which was organized by Jiangsu Energy Research Society and represented by academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and industry experts. The meeting concluded that the technology of mesoporous insulation materials is highly innovative, and the overall research & development results have reached the international leading level. Innovations in the following three areas have been recognized:

1) This technology applies functional mesoporous materials (inorganic nanoporous materials) to the preparation of composite insulation materials based on the thermal insulation theory of nanoporous materials, and a kind of mesoporous composite insulation materials has been developed, with functional mesoporous materials as the core and various inorganic long fibers and additives as supplements. The materials have excellent thermal insulation performance: [thermal conductivity of hot surface at 300℃ ≤0.033w/(m·K), thermal conductivity of hot surface at 500℃ ≤0.047w/(m·K)], hydrophobicity ≥98%, volumetric water absorption ≤0.6% and Class A1 non-combustible.

2) A water-based production process under normal pressure is independently developed through this technology, so that the synthesis of functional mesoporous materials and the preparation of composite insulation materials are realized. The product process is simple, fast, pollution-free and low-cost, and the products have long service life.

3) Through third-party testing, the performance indicators of the products meet the technical requirements, and the energy saving rate is >30%.