Fast preparation of glass fiber/silica aerogel blanket in ethanol & water solvent system

Although silica aerogel is an excellent thermal insulation material, the poor mechanical property limits its application. The glass fiber reinforced silica aerogel with excellent mechanical property through facile sol-gel process is reported. Innovatively, during the experiments, ethanol was introduced as the main solvent in the water glass based silica sol through ion concentration adjustion to get rid of the conventional solvent exchange. To improve the mechanical property of the product, glass fiber was introduced during the gelation process. Catalyzed by hydrogen chloride, hexamethyldisiloxane was utilized as the modificaton agent. The glass fiber reinforced silica aerogel with low thermal conductivity (0.024 W/m·K) was obtained after ambient pressure drying. Three-point loading tests indicated excellent anti-flexure ability of the as-prepared glass fiber reinforced silica aerogel. Moreover, the entire preparation period can be reduced to ~20 h.