[Music]
this is the ultimate test of aerogel I
put myself on the line to see who wins
in the Battle of flamethrower versus
aerogel
[Music]
so if you really want to see the
insulating properties of air gel you got
to put it to the test and this material
here is like the most insulating right
what is this yeah so this is pyro gel
xte it's made by Aspen aerogel so it's
one centimeter thick it doesn't look
like the blue stuff because it's
actually a fiberglass blanket that's
infused with aerogel by the blue stuff
he means this silica aerogel it's made
of the same material as sand or glass
but if you zoom into the nanoscale you'd
see it has a sponge-like structure with
tiny pores just tens of nanometers
across now aerogel can be up to 99.8%
air but it's a better thermal insulator
than air because those pores are so tiny
that hot air struggles to diffuse
through them plus the nanoscale
structure itself is a poor conductor of
heat but aerogel is pretty fragile in
this form and so it's not really
practical for most uses instead what you
can do is actually take tiny particles
of aerogel and embed them in a composite
material like blankets but it has the
additional component iron oxide just
basically rust that makes it opaque to
infrared radiation so it's good at
stifling conduction convection and
radiation and on the other side of this
insulating aerogel blanket we have Ben
who he's from Cape Cod and responded to
a tweet of mine when I asked if anyone
in this area has a flamethrower or a not
a flamethrower in this case from the
boring company have you ever fired this
before I have not so this will be at
first okay so what we're gonna do is try
to test what the temperature is on the
far side of that blanket when we put the
flamethrower at full bore on to this
side all right are you ready I'm ready
all right let's give this a try right
here I have the FLIR thermal camera this
is the T 1020 which can record up to
2,000 degrees Celsius first for
comparison let's see what this
flamethrower can do to something that's
not aerogel let's put it to the test on
this super-sized
she's kiss there you go all right Ben
within seconds the temperature of the
chocolate is up to hundreds of degrees
Celsius
around 30 seconds the whole thing starts
to collapse
even after the flamethrower is removed
parts of the chocolate are still well
over 600 degrees Celsius I think this is
what the internet likes they like really
hot things applied to you know novelty
objects okay now is the time to really
put aerogel to the test he's about to
put the flame for our full bore on this
side of the blanket just one centimeter
away will be my hand on the backside of
the blanket
one heart
come in not I don't feel any Heat
that is crazy
propane burns at about 2,000 Celsius so
this point
I barely feel anything
that is incredible
[Music]
they look like from the back
feels like feels warm what about the
other side how hots the other side so
this flame door was producing over 660
degrees Celsius on this side meanwhile
on the other side we were just measuring
about 50 degrees Celsius we're going up
to the highest range that this camera
can do up to 2000 degrees Celsius okay I
know we're not gonna be able to see much
except for the really hot stuff let's go
for it that is just insane but this
blanket is still not hot
you see that with the thermal how hot is
it 50 degrees see on the thermal I got
900 at one point yeah and it's actually
still it's over 200 degrees Celsius
right now whoa yeah right there and I
can still touch it yeah can you see my
handprints after I touched it Wow
now you might be wondering how it's
possible to touch something hotter than
100 degrees Celsius without getting
burned well for that we need to go to
another demonstration this is a hot
plate set to around 150 degrees Celsius
and on top of it is a metal plate that
is mostly covered in about a millimeter
of an air gel coating called
air lawn but a small square in the
corner is left uncovered this says about
120 627 degrees Celsius so clearly
hotter than boiling water so would you
put your hand in boiling water
I don't think so that would hurt but
what about putting it on this coating so
let me try
how's it feel not like 130 degrees it
feels hot but yeah but it doesn't feel
like 130 degrees I wonder to prove the
point there's some water in a little
beaker when I move that oh yeah your
figure yeah totally your hand prints
thermal handprints left behind so I was
cooling down the surface cooling it down
over here this is not coated and this is
I think slightly hotter it's about it's
Wow 180 degrees Celsius so that is the
part I don't want to touch yeah I
definitely don't want to touch it
because it doesn't have Erica on it this
is such a thin coating it's about a
millimeter but even that millimeter of
aerogel means that you can touch
something that otherwise you would be
totally unable to touch this would
definitely burn you and that's why
there's a little beaker of water with a
dropper is there you go I moved it okay
so take some of that and just to prove
the point put it on the metal square let
me put some of this on that piece of
metal here I'm gonna drop a little bit
of water on it so we can see this really
cools the drops that splattered off onto
the aerilon coating are not boiling
let's have a look here
and this water doesn't doesn't boil
right there I don't know if this is
gonna be like he trip he transferred
through the water it gets hot put your
finger on the air a lot itself without
the water right like there yeah no big
deal right
yeah I mean that's not it's not
uncomfortable it's clearly hot but it's
but it's not like you know putting your
hand in boiling water which is kind of
crazy because it is hotter than boiling
water but it just doesn't conduct the
energy to your hand that fast that's
really weird
they use this for applications which
they call safe touch so that's something
that would normally instantly burn you
something hot enough to boil water you
could hold your hand on four minutes and
it wouldn't at all okay so far in this
video I focused on using air gel in hot
applications but it works equally well
at the other end of the temperature
spectrum at cryogenic temperatures and
this comes in handy for things like
liquefied natural gas plants or by NASA
when they're using liquid helium you
need really good insulation to keep the
heat out I mean those cold pipes if
they're not insulated properly can end
up with huge ice falls on them which not
only is inefficient it's also incredibly
dangerous so this is one of the major
applications for aerogel these days if
you take a piece of cryo gel and dip it
in liquid nitrogen for a good while it
is still flexible when you bring it out
and that's kind of essential when you're
working with material that needs to
function at ultra cold temperatures here
is a carbon aerogel that has been
submerged in liquid nitrogen and as that
liquid nitrogen turns back into the gas
state it functions like its own air
hockey puck except instead of the air
coming from the table it comes from the
puck itself you can even buy ski jackets
these days that have special aerogel
lined pockets that stay significantly
warmer than standard jacket pockets and
they're specially made for your cell
phone so that it doesn't freeze up in
the cold weather you know I feel like
this is a story of something that
started as an oddity as something that
didn't really have applications but
clearly is a anime
insulation and can be made into a really
strong fire retardant material why would
they insulate subsea oil pipelines with
this material that's a really
interesting question so this was what we
would call the killer app for aerogel
the oil that comes out of wells in the
deep ocean is very viscous and slaggy
and so if you just had a pipe with that
oil it would basically gum up and so
what you have to do is put another pipe
around it and fill that gap with
insulation it's called a pipe and pipe
configuration and so they heat the oil
they have to keep it flowing but you
need to insulate that so that it doesn't
lose all of its heat to the cold
temperatures of the surrounding ocean so
if you think about laying pipes like
that from a ship you have these long
segments of pipe that the ship has to
basically pick it off put over the side
of the boat and drop down the ocean so
you know at some point the pipe becomes
so big and so heavy and capsized the
boat so they're really only three
vessels on the planet that we're big
enough to lay that really large diameter
pipe for subsoil pipelines Aspen
aerogels came along and said hey guys
we've got this really great new
insulation it's three times better than
polyurethane so I can take this much
polyurethane foam and shrink it into an
insulation that's that much aerogel now
what it did was allowed you to shrink
the outer diameter pipe of this pipe and
pipe configuration substantially and
because of that mass reduction from the
smaller diameter pipe all of a sudden
250 ships around the world
Callay that smaller diameter pipe
without any loss of performance in the
oil pipeline and so that resulted in
alleviating years back logs of these
pipe lines that need to get laid and
save billions of billion stars now when
we filmed this video I knew the title
would probably be something like
flamethrower versus aerogel but I didn't
think of it like a real battle like what
would it mean for the aerogel to win
that it just you know didn't get hot or
something but as it turns out in the
flamethrower user manual it instructs
you only to ever pull the trigger for
seven seconds at a time
maximum but to get the shot and to get
the blanket hot enough I frequently told
Ben to pull the trigger for 5 or 10
times that long
that's like that was like triple okay
and what we noticed over the course of
the shoot was that the flamethrower was
working less and less well and we
thought it was out of fuel but it just
turned out something inside it was
breaking and by the end we couldn't even
pull the trigger
so I'm sorry Ben and in the battle of
flamethrower versus air gel
I think air gel definitely won
you