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NEWS
Armacell and JIOS establish joint venture
for Aerogel blankets
Together with JIOS Aerogel Ltd, South Korea, Armacell has established the joint venture Armacell Jios Aerogels Ltd (AJA) for the development and manufacturing of silica aerogel blankets. The new company will be based in Hong Kong and South Korea, operating from Armacell’s exist- ing manufacturing facility in Cheonan, close to Seoul, South Korea.
JIOS will contribute its process technology and proprietary manufactur- ing know-how as well as the intellectual property (IP). Armacell will invest into state-of-the-art production equipment for aerogel blankets, accelerate the industrialization and certification process and provide its worldwide distribution network to market the new technology. AJA will focus on delivering tailor-made solutions based on aerogel blan- kets to the oil and gas, marine and general industrial sectors – in par- ticular for high temperature and cryogenic applications. The joint ven- ture with JIOS provides Armacell with access to the next generation of aerogel technology and enables the company to deliver a complete portfolio of thermal and acoustic insulation solutions to the oil and gas industry.
Background facts
What are aerogels?
Aerogels are highly porous solid materials composed to over 90 % of air. As the pores are only nanometres (billionths of a metre) in size, the energy transfer is greatly reduced. Aerogel is not only the solid material with the lowest density worldwide, it is also an extremely effective insulation material. In comparison to tradi- tional insulation materials, aerogel products achieve the same per- formance with only half or a third of the insulation thickness. The temperature resistance is also outstanding, in both cryogenic and high-temperature applications. JIOS has developed an innovative, proprietary manufacturing
process, which allows a reduction in the pre- viously very high pro- duction costs.
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