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Heat reflectors are any material that reflects infrared radiation away from itself rather than absorbing and emitting it. You see this in daily life when you choose to sit on a white bench instead of a black bench on a sunny day. Technological and industrial insulation applications are sensitive to far finer temperature differentials than your rear end. A high-performance heat reflector must posses 5 qualities...
Off the rack insulation products are useful in many consumer applications because they are often designed to a specific standard or end use. The most common example of this is wall insulation for residential and commercial buildings, which are produced in widths that match standard code for wall stud spacing. With industrial applications, the flexibility of custom production gives manufacturers a competitive and economic advantage. For example...
Before many of the contemporary advances in technology, heat management boiled down to building things out of thick layers of non-conductive materials. Parkas and fire jackets were packages stuffed with insulation. Fire walls were made of metal or concrete, and heat-resistant walls were just thicker than others. Although virtually every application of heat reflective fabrics works in a similar fashion, the applications are incredibly diverse. More than one major industry needs to protect things from becoming too hot, too cold, or both. For example…
At its core, industrial insulation is the same as the insulation in your attic at home. It reduces transfer of heat to make a space more comfortable and cost less to maintain. Whether it protects against heat, reduces sound transfer, or protects against specific electromagnetic frequencies, industrial insulation works via the same basic principles. That said, the wider variety of tasks and environments for industrial application make industrial insulation more flexible, come in more varieties, and honestly more interesting than the fiberglass batting that’s over your head right now.
Surface emissivity is the amount of infrared energy emitted by a specific material. In the insulation industry, surface emissivity is a major factor in the effectiveness of the product, yet one often overlooked and overshadowed by thermal conductivity or “k values”. Both are important in that they address different methods of heat transfer (infrared radiation vs. conduction) but in some applications -- like attic insulation in warm climates, shipping and receiving goods at extreme temperatures, and industrial insulation for equipment operating at high temperatures -- infrared radiation plays a bigger role than conduction, and low surface emissivity is key.
Steven Yializis