Comparison of the insulation property of an innovative material and a traditional one by infrared thermography

An innovative ceramic material has been developed as a possible substitute of the traditional rock-wool as thermal insulating material. It should be used in the future inside a machine working at a temperature greater than 200 degrees C. The effect of exposition to this temperature for several hours has been evaluated to check if a degradation of the insulating properties can be measured. Experiments did not show any evidence of degradation. Nonetheless the value of the thermal conductivity measured both at high and ambient temperature was not so good as expected. At the same time, the same measurements on rock-wool (the traditional choice for insulation in this machinery) revealed to be very difficult as it is not possible to prepare samples to be tested in a laser flash. To overcome this problem in the measurement of the performance at high temperature a new experiment was prepared by heating one side of the material by means of an electric heater and by looking and comparing (at least qualitatively) the temperature increase on the other side. On the purpose, two parallelepiped samples of the two rival materials, with the same thickness have been prepared and put in contact with the electric heater plate. The temperature evolution of the side facing the ambient has been measured by means of a thermographic camera for almost one hour. The experiment shows that the traditional material owns better insulation performance than the innovative one. Attention has been paid on the properties of the innovative material that, being highly hygroscopic, can maintain a low temperature during the drying process due to the very high value of the latent heat of water when changing from liquid to gas phase.