The present invention relates to a process for producing an aerogel material based on amorphous silica, comprising the following steps:

a) preparing a mixture comprising silica sol, alcohol, and a hydrophobizing agent activatable by acid catalysis;

b1) adding a base to the mixture formed in step a) and mixing the resulting mixture;

b2) gelation of the mixture comprising silica sol obtained in step b2), resulting in the formation of a silica gel, and optional aging of the gel;

c) adding a hydrophobization catalyst to the silica gel formed in step b2) and optionally aged, in-situ formation or controlled release of a hydrophobization catalyst, and initiation of the catalyzed hydrophobization of the silica;

d) removing the volatile constituents of the mixture formed in step c) by subcritical drying, resulting in the formation of the aerogel material, wherein at least steps b2) to d) are carried out in the same reactor.

The present invention relates to a method of preparing a hydrophobic metal oxide-silica composite aerogel, in which a degree of hydrophobicity may be controlled while having a high specific surface area and a low tap density, and a hydrophobic metal oxide-silica composite aerogel prepared thereby. The preparation method according to the present invention may not only have excellent productivity and economic efficiency due to a relatively simpler preparation process and shorter preparation time than the related art, but may also perform an effective surface modification reaction by using a small amount of a surface modifier. Thus, since the surface modification reaction may be easily performed by using only a very small amount of the surface modifier, a hydrophobic metal oxide-silica composite aerogel containing about 1 wt % to 2 wt % of carbon may be prepared.

A dried polymer aerogel has a Brunauer-Emmett Teller (BET) surface area over 100 m2/g, porosity of greater than 10%, visible transparency greater than 20%, color rendering index of over 20%, and average pore size of less than 100 nm.

Disclosed are multilayered aerogel nanocomposite materials, and methods of making and using them.

A silica aerogel having a mean pore size less than 5 nm with a standard deviation of 3 nm. The silica aerogel may have greater than 95% solar-weighted transmittance at a thickness of 8 mm for wavelengths in the range of 250 nm to 2500 nm, and a 400 C. black-body weighted specific extinction coefficient of greater than 8 m.sup.2/kg for wavelengths of 1.5 m to 15 m. Silica aerogel synthesis methods are described. A solar thermal aerogel receiver (STAR) may include an opaque frame defining an opening, an aerogel layer disposed in the opaque frame, with at least a portion of the aerogel layer being proximate the opening, and a heat transfer fluid pipe in thermal contact with and proximate the aerogel layer. A concentrating solar energy system may include a STAR and at least one reflector to direct sunlight to an opening in the STAR.

An aerogel and method of making the aerogel is disclosed. The aerogel is a polyimide/polyamide hybrid with a cross-linking agent that induces gelation.

The present disclosure provides an anisotropic lamellar inorganic fiber aerogel material and a preparation method thereof. The method includes: mixing a polymer solution, an inorganic precursor and a chloride to obtain a spinning precursor solution; blow spinning the spinning precursor solution to obtain a composite fiber aerogel; calcinating the composite fiber aerogel to obtain the anisotropic lamellar inorganic fiber aerogel material. Therefore, the method has advantages of simplicity, easy operation, low cost, high efficiency and easy industrialized production. The inorganic fiber aerogel materials prepared by the above method are composed of multi-layer stacked fibers and have an anisotropic lamellar structure, which can be cut into any desired shape, and stacked to any desired thickness. In addition, the inorganic fiber aerogel materials have good flexibility and compressibility, excellent fire resistance, good high and low temperature resistance and superior thermal insulation, which greatly expands their application field.

The present invention relates to a method of preparing an aerogel blanket in which, a surface of a base material for a blanket is activated and roughness and porosity of the surface of the base material for a blanket are increased to increase adhesion performance of a silica aerogel by inducing etching of a surface of a base material for a blanket using an acidic solution, and mechanical flexibility is increased and the generation of dust is minimized by further performing a gel deformation process of introducing cracks into the aerogel, and a low-dust and high-insulation aerogel blanket prepared according to the present invention.

The present disclosure provides an anisotropic lamellar inorganic fiber aerogel material and a preparation method thereof. The method includes: mixing a polymer solution, an inorganic precursor and a chloride to obtain a spinning precursor solution; blow spinning the spinning precursor solution to obtain a composite fiber aerogel; calcinating the composite fiber aerogel to obtain the anisotropic lamellar inorganic fiber aerogel material. Therefore, the method has advantages of simplicity, easy operation, low cost, high efficiency and easy industrialized production. The inorganic fiber aerogel materials prepared by the above method are composed of multi-layer stacked fibers and have an anisotropic lamellar structure, which can be cut into any desired shape, and stacked to any desired thickness. In addition, the inorganic fiber aerogel materials have good flexibility and compressibility, excellent fire resistance, good high and low temperature resistance and superior thermal insulation, which greatly expands their application field.

Provided are a method of preparing a metal oxide-silica composite aerogel, and a metal oxide-silica composite aerogel having an excellent weight reduction property prepared by the method. The method includes a step of adding an acid catalyst to a first water glass solution to prepare an acidic water glass solution (step 1); a step of adding a metal ion solution to the acidic water glass solution to prepare a precursor solution (step 2); and a step of adding a second water glass solution to the precursor solution and performing a gelation reaction (step 3) to yield a metal oxide-silica composite wet gel, wherein, in steps 2 and 3, bubbling of an inert gas is performed during the adding of the metal ion solution or the second water glass solution, respectively.