Characterization and synthesis of polyester and viscose nonwovens fabrics embedded with nanoporous amorphous silica

Abstract

Supreme thermal insulating properties of fibre composite can fortify its niche as a middle layer for numerous cold wear articles. Aiming to achieve lowest thermal conductivity, two separate nonwoven composites were successfully developed by using polyester and viscose fibres. Both were reinforced separately with in-house synthesized nanoporous amorphous silica via sol-gel processing using Tetraethoxy orthosilicate as a precursor with ambient pressure drying. Both nonwovens with two levels of GSM were subjected to silica sol for synthesis of nonwoven/SiO2 composite followed by solvent exchange, silylation and ambient pressure drying. The resulted structures were analyzed and evaluated for their thermal conductivity, pore size and characterized by The Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy and Scanning electron microscopy. Properties of composites were examined and compared to each level and attributes. Significant differences between the parameters were calculated using statistica v7.0. One of composite showed lowest thermal conductivity value 0.028 W/m.K

Keywords:

• Word
• silica aerogel
• nanoporous silica composite
• nonwoven composite
• thermal insulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.