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Elastic polybenzimidazole nanofiber aerogel for thermal insulation and high-temperature oil adsorption

  • Polymers & biopolymers
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Abstract

Thermal insulation and hot oil adsorption have been paid increasing attention to industrial development. Decomposition and combustion of commercial heat insulation materials may happen in the continuously high temperature (≥ 200 °C) or/and instantaneously ultra-high temperature (≥ 250 °C). Nanofiber aerogel with versatile properties is a potential candidate for thermal insulation and hot oil adsorption. In this work, a novel three-dimensional polybenzimidazole nanofiber aerogel is designed and fabricated for thermal insulation and adsorption of high-temperature oil. Directional freeze casting and freeze-drying techniques are applied to build the three-dimensional structure. A nanofiber-corbelled porous-layer architecture is obtained by optimization with the adhesive effect of starch-derived carbon. Thanks to this architecture, the polybenzimidazole nanofiber aerogel owns suitable mechanical flexibility for delaying heat diffusion. Furthermore, the adsorption and thermal insulation at high temperatures are simultaneously achieved with its high porosity, low thermal conductivity, and thermal stability. This study proposes a promising path for aerogel preparation and applications on effective thermal insulation and hot oil adsorption.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the joint financial support provided by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2232022D-09), Shanghai Sailing Program (22YF1400400), Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51703024), and the “Chenguang Program” (18CG37) by Shanghai Education Development Foundation and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission.

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Author notes

  1. Dong Liu and Guangkai Hu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers & Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, People’s Republic of China

    Dong Liu, Guangkai Hu, Tao Huang, Bin Yu, Hao Yu & Meifang Zhu

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  1. Dong Liu
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  3. Tao Huang
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Contributions

DL: Methodology, Visualization, Writing an original draft. GH: Methodology, Investigation, Data Curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing-review & editing. TH: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing-review & editing. BY: Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing-review & editing. HY: Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing-review & editing. MZ: Supervision.

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Correspondence to Tao Huang or Bin Yu.

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Liu, D., Hu, G., Huang, T. et al. Elastic polybenzimidazole nanofiber aerogel for thermal insulation and high-temperature oil adsorption. J Mater Sci 57, 12125–12137 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-022-07300-x

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