This article reported on the synthesis, characterization, life cycle assessment (LCA) of nano insulation materials (NIMs) that are made of hollow silica nanospheres (HSNSs). The transient plane source (TPS) technique was used to determine the thermal properties of the HSNSs. The thermal conductivity of the HSNSs is quite low at 0.02 W/mK because thermal conductivity is predominantly size-dependent at the nanometer scale. The HSNS NIMs were found to be comparable ...
This study investigated the relationship between hygrothermal properties and bulk density of compressed earthen bricks. Thermal conductivity of compressed earthen samples was measured using a thermal apparatus with transient plane source method. Compressed earthen material with lower bulk density was found to have a lower thermal conductivity than higher bulk density materials since low bulk density samples have more pores filled with air....
The authors present the synthesis of hollow silica nanospheres (HSNSs) by a template-assisted approach using polystyrene nanospheres as templates. These nanospheres could potentially be used as nano insulation materials due to their low thermal conductivity ~0.02 W/m K. The authors also examined the environmental footprint of these nanospheres by life cycle assessment, and it was found that they possess a high embodied energy. It was thus suggested that new synthetic ...
Monodisperse hollow silica nanospheres with an outer diameter of ~300nm were prepared for the comparison of thermal conductivity with similar solid silica nanospheres. It was found that the thermal conductivity of the hollow nanospheres was lower than that of the solid silica nanospheres....
In this paper, researchers synthesized monodispersed polystyrene spheres (PS), of a desired size. Generally, PS have a typical diameter ranging from 180 nm to 900 nm. However, the researchers in this study were able to reduce the sphere size, by increasing the polyvinylpyrolidone/styrene weight ratio. The PS were used as models, in order to fabricate hollow silica nanospheres (HSNSs), for thermal insulation applications. With modifications to this silica coating process, HSNSs ...
