3rd meeting of young researchers at UP 1 - IJUP - Universidade do ...

Incorporation of a nanostructured material into textile substrates for
development of high insulation materials
L. Almeida 1 , B. Moura 2 , A. Carneiro 2 , M.F.R. Pereira 1
1 Dep. de Engenharia Química, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Portugal.
2 Centro de Nanotecnologia e Materiais Técnicos, Funcionais e Inteligentes (CeNTI),
V. N. Famalicão, Portugal.
Thermal insulation is a key issue in many different applications namely: clothing, construction,
sports, aerospace and automotive. There are two ways of obtaining improved thermal
insulation [1, 2]:
• Increasing the thickness of the insulation, a method which has been used for the last 20
years but which has various disadvantages, for example the loss of space, the increase
of weight, etc.
• Reducing the thermal conductivity of the insulation material.
The aim of this work consists in the incorporation of a nanostructured silica based material into
different thin and lightweight textile substrates, to improve their original thermal insulation
properties. Different incorporation procedures were studied and the developed materials were
characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy with X-ray Microanalysis (SEM/EDS),
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance (FTIR/ATR) and
thermogravimetry (TG). The thermal resistance was measured by Sweating Guarded-Hotplate
method (commonly named Skin Model) in accordance with the standard ISO 11092:1993
[3,4].
The results showed an expressive increase of the thermal insulation properties of the treated
textile substrates.
Acknowledgments: This work was partially funded by Projecto de Investigação Científica na Pré-
Graduação 2009, U.P. and Santander Totta, and by FCT and FEDER (Portugal) through project
PTDC/CTM/108820/2008.
References:
[1] IEA Energy Conservation in Buildings & Community Systems,
http://www.ecbcs.org/annexes/annex39.htm, accessed in January of 2010.
[2] Papadopoulos, A. M. State of the art in thermal insulation materials and aims for future
developments, Energy and Building, 37, 77-86 (2005)
[3] ISO 11092, Textiles - Physiological effects - Measurements of thermal and water-vapour resistance
under steady-state conditions (Sweating Guarded-Hotplate Test), International Organization for
Standardization, Geneva, 1993.
[4] Moura, B. Desenvolvimento de materiais com elevado isolamento térmico, Master Thesis,
University of Porto, Portugal, 2009.
410 3 rd meeting of young researchers at UP