Materials and method

To prepare silica aerogel nonwoven composite, silica source was primarily dissolved in water to obtain
1.5% by weight solution.

Water base silica aerogel dilution in water 1:1 and 1:3.

Nonwoven fabric was firstly washed with pure ethanol and then dried in an oven to remove all possible
impurities. The areal density of the nonwoven was in the range 360 g/m2.

Nonwoven then will be placed in silica solution and soaked overnight to allow the diffusion of the silica
inside the fabrics.

Afterwards it will be taken out the solution of the solution and dried 60 degree 24 hours

The last step was to dry wet composite gels at 90 bar and 313 K with supercritical carbon dioxide using
an Applied Separations Speed SFE system with a 500 ml extraction vessel

Primarily, the vessel was filled with pure ethanol to prevent the contact of the composite samples with
air and the synthesized composite was placed inside.

Initially, ethanol which was used to fill the vessel was extracted.

This was followed by extraction of ethanol from the pores of the samples to dry them completely, which
took about 7 h.

Subsequently, the vessel was depressurized slowly (around 0.3 ml/min) to prevent formation of cracks
in the aerogel component.

Beads of alginate aerogels were also produced separately using a similar procedure. The alginate
solution was poured into CaCl2 with the help of a burette to form beads. The ethanol-water aging and
drying of these beads were done in similar way as were done for PET nonwoven composite.
The thermal properties of pure nonwoven and aerogel nonwoven composite are presented in the table.
Thermal resistance is an important parameter to characterize the thermal insulation properties of
fabrics and is expressed by:

ℎ
𝑟=
𝑘

r =thermal resistance

h =thickness, m

k =thermal conductivity, W/mK

thermal diffusivity is another important parameter to describe the thermal behavior of aerogel based
nonwoven composite.it describe the flow of heat through any medium and is calculated by the following
expression:

𝑘
𝑎=
𝜌. 𝐶𝑝
𝑘 = thermal conductivity
𝐶𝑝 = specific heat capacity of fabric
𝜌 = density

Thermal properties of silica aerogel nonwoven composite and pure nonwoven composite

Thermal Thermal Thermal Heat

Thickness Density
Fabric type resistance conductivity diffusivity capacity
(mm) (kg/m3)
(m2/w) (wm-1k-1) (mm2/s) (j/kg.k)
Aerogel-Cotton
waste nonwoven
composite
Pure cotton waste
nonwoven

Sweating guarded Hot plate

Materials

Cotton waste nonwoven fabric

- Needlepunced
- Areal density?
Water based silica aerogel paste

- 10 wt% silica aerogel particle in water

PDMS

- Silicone elastomer curing agent

- Silicone elastomer base

Preparation

Result and discussion

- Morphological characterization

- Thermal stability

To analyse thermal stability/degradation behavior of the cotton waste nonwoven hybrid fabric
including different silica aerogel content. Pure silica aerogel as a reference in the TGA curve.

Evaluation of relative comparison of the characteristic temperature of 10% weight loss (T10) and
peak degradation (Tpeak) as well as the residue at 650 degree.

Residues
sample code T10 Tpeak
(wt%)
C/A-0
C/A-34
C/A-50

- Thermal insulation property

Infrared camera?

Measure using sweating guarded hot

Surface temperature of the fabrics on a custom designed plate with a range of temperature
from -50 to 80 degree.
 Determine the thermal insulation properties of the hybrid fabrics with different silica content by
characterizing the surface temperature difference between the fabrics and the plate ΔTf=Tfabric-
Tplate as a function of the temperature difference between the plate and the ambient ΔTa=Tplate-
Tambient. The higher the ΔTf at given ΔTa indicates the higher the thermal performance.