The main objective of NanoHybrids was the development of the first pilot-scale production system for a new generation of multifunctional nanoporous organic and hybrid aerogels with applications in gas adsorption, humidity control, consumer good and food.
Aerogels are the lightest solids existing today and are mainly used for the thermal insulation purposes. Therefore, the market is mainly limited by inorganic aerogels. However, other applications fields, primary life science applications require biocompatible aerogels.
In general, organic aerogels could have much broader application sprectrum, which is still not fully exploited, mainly because currently, organic or hybrid aerogels are not produced on an industrial or pilot scale. This limits significantly the further development of the organic aerogels and their transfer to the market. NanoHybrids has developed the means to scale-up organic and hybrid aerogels production from the laboratory to the pilot scale. The aerogels produced were tested in corresponding prototypes in industrial environments. Based on the test results from the prototypes, the chemical composition, physical properties and pore size distribution of the materials were adjusted for each given application. In order to reduce the processing time and manufacturing costs, the focus was made on the production of aerogel particles with desired particle size distribution. In order to optimize the process, especially the supercritical drying step, a special multi-scale model allowing to describe all the production steps is developed. The optimized conditions are realized in the pilot scale supercritical drying unit (> 500 L). More then 200 Liters of organic (alginate-based) aerogels in form of microparticles were produced.
Overall, new aerogel products and a cost efficient technology for their pilot scale production are established and protected by industrial partners. Based on these results a concept for the larger production scale was developed. For new aerogel applications, business cases/plans were presented. Finally, the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of organic and hybrid aerogel production was increased from TRL 4 to TRL6/7. In conclusion, the project firstly enabled the production of organic aerogels in form of particles of different sizes, in quantities required for the tests in real industrial environment.
