Limits of Thermal Insulations: Heat Transfer within Evacuated Porous High-Performance Insulations

High-performance thermal insulations (HPI) have outstanding thermal properties minimizing heat transfer for a particular application. The term “high performance” is a relative assessment: whether an insulating property for a material or material system, i.e. the thermal conductivity or thermal transmittance, is significantly lower than for conventional insulating materials or systems depends on the use case and the associated conditions. Fields of applications for thermal insulations include energy, construction, industry and transport sector, as well as space and aviation industries. The total effective thermal conductivity of evacuated HPI depends on the contributions of the heat transfer via the solid skeleton of the porous insulation material and radiative heat exchange. At a given operating temperature, the effective thermal conductivity results in a minimum that depends on the density and the infrared-optically extinction properties of the insulation material. Examples for HPI with outstanding low thermal conductivity values are presented and compared with the theoretical predictions based on a percolation model for the solid thermal conductivity of the skeleton and on a diffusion model for the radiative heat transfer.