Kitchen experiments with Aerogel: Temperature

Ideas, thoughts, and resources from the permanently curious.

Living

World

Politics

Fire from a match left soot on the aerogel but it didn't seem to burn on its own:
Freezing it had no effect. It was as warm as room temperature. Warming it in an oven had the same effect (none!).
Microwaves work by causing water molecules in an object to vibrate and create heat. No water, no heat. Aerogel has no water, so no heat:
In the skillet there was a progression from 109F to 115F to 135F:

... but left aerogel cool enough to touch:

That's a 55F degree temperature difference between the *air* over the aerogel and the skillet. The aerogel itself was room temperature, basically. I attempted to shortcut the air problem using an aluminum foil shroud around the probe:

That seemed to slow the heating, slightly, but not much.
Similar experiments with the pieces left from the toolbox experiment established that very small pieces of aerogel react the same way but heat the air much more:

The skillet is at 130 and the air over the aerogel is 15F lower, rather than 55F as with the full piece. The surrounding air was so hot it was nearly impossible to tolerate for any length of time:
So I took the pieces of aerogel and turned them into dust with my fingers, put it into a Ziplock bag and vacuum packed it:

I wrapped the temperature probe in the center of the blanket, folded the ends in, and immersed it in boiling water and it behaved as though the aerogel wasn't even there:

Complete failure.
So I figured I'd make a huge mound of aerogel, put it in the oven with the thermometer completely buried in the middle and see if that does it. Here's a pic of my control w/ flour:

When I got to the aerogel it actually heated up faster than the flour, which seems a bit odd for the best insulator on the planet. Despite assurances from its maker, I figured the thermometer probe is conducting heat to the tip, where the temp is read, and the aerogel is keeping that heat there because it's such a good insulator.
So I flipped the experiment so the probe wouldn't be a liability. I put hot water in a Tupperware container:

... and then put it in a box with aerogel in it and taped it shut

... and recorded the temp every few minutes. I then repeated the experiment with nothing but a cup holding the Tupperware container up in the box because static air is supposed to be a good insulator. And then finally I tried it without the box or anything. Aerogel beat the static air, which beat nothing:

Finally! The aerogel ended up teaching ME about insulation, particularly how hard insulating it is. Keeping an area at "room temperature" in an extreme environment either requires perfect insulation and managed outlets for excess temps (i.e. NASA spacecraft) or a fresh flow of that room temperature air (i.e. our homes). Keeping an object hotter or colder than room temp (think of hot coffee or iced drinks) didn't require the exacting standards so in the end that was how I got the graph above.
One thing though - that pic of the blow torch and crayons was probably taken soon after the torch was turned on. If they left it there for a few minutes the crayons would most likely melt from the warm air around them. Then the gel would get wet from the wax and be destroyed, just like in the liquid/oil experiment.
For aerogel that has been immersed in liquid, the heat properties vanished even after a towel drying. Letting it sit for a day and dry out improved that almost all the way to regular aerogel. Heat barely touched it, restoring perhaps 95% of the imperviousness to heat:

Of course, since it crumbles so easily it's small and so the air above is a lot hotter.
I tested the aerogel blanket created in the strength and composition experiments against a non-aerogel blanket of Plasti Dip. Given what we learned earlier about insulation I boiled half a hot dog, rolled it into the blanket and tied it off, and measured the temperature decrease between the two:

That's the control and the aerogel one respectively. The data revealed the aerogel started 9 degrees below the control and still heald the temp nearly a minute longer:

Imagine that - 24 minutes with open ends and still 109F! If I were going to do this again I'd mix the granules and Plasti Dip in a bucket and make sure I had enough Plasti Dip in there so it'd only need one coat. Also, keep in mind the Plasti Dip is only good to 200F or so. I think silicone would be best since it should be good to 400 or 500F, if you can find a place to do it.

Bookmark this site!