Basalt Woven Textile
materialdistrict.com
materialdistrict.com
https://www.windelo-catamaran.com/en/recycled-and-biosourced...
There has to be an interesting commentary here regarding the necessity of productive endeavours that pay taxes and fund local governments and drive investors portfolios into the black, all funded by useless largesse.
It's super cool to find an alternative to fiberglass.
Maybe they could be used in wind turbines as well.
> The basalt fibers typically have a filament diameter of between 10 and 20 μm which is far enough above the respiratory limit of 5 μm to make basalt fiber a suitable replacement for asbestos.
The source mentioned is a basalt fiber brand website, so not sure if that's enough for confidence.
And they aren't wrong, inhaling basalt fibers is dangerous and long term exposure could injure or kill you. It's just a different mechanism than asbestos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
See for example this MSDS for basalt. https://mcdn.martinmarietta.com/assets/safety-data-sheets/ba...
> The major concern is silicosis (lung disease), caused by the inhalation and retention of respirable crystalline silica dust.
(NB: I do not know if or claim that basalt fibers are more dangerous than alternatives.)
For what it's worth, the ex-composite-shop guys I used to work with said that basically everything you can make a composite out of is horribly nasty: carbon fiber, fiberglass, basalt fiber, probably anything period. After repeated exposure you develop contact dermatitis to that type of fiber and the shop moves you on to working with something else, until it happens again. Contact dermatitis is just the first visible sign, it gets worse from there. Eventually you're probably going to want to get out of the shop entirely.
And yes, you should probably use gloves and a mask when working with it, but it's not carcinogenic like asbestos.
It doesn't hurt that the treatment to make them non-flammable and rot-resistant is quite benine and that the demand much less energy to manufacture.
My understanding is that basalt fibers seem to be glassy, not crystalline, so the breaking does not happen.
Asbestos is made from some silicates (pyroxenes or amphiboles) which contain long covalent chains of silicon and oxygen atoms, which are more likely to separate than to break transversally.
Basalt also contains pyroxenes and amphiboles, but they are mixed with other kinds of silicates and they also have a different chemical composition than those of asbestos, so as far as it is known for now the probability of breaking into very thin fibers is very low for basalt fibers.
It is plausible that basalt fibers should be safer, because unlike with asbestos, which is made from rather rare minerals, basalt covers a large fraction of the surface of the Earth, so if basalt were dangerous erosion should have made harmful basalt fragments abundant in the environment.
While there are glasses much stronger than ordinary glass, there are a lot of even stronger ceramics, which are (poly-)crystalline.
Glasses have many advantages vs. other materials, e.g. easy processing for making any shapes, including fibers, no porosity, chemical resistance, optical transparency and so on, but strength is not one of them.
The glass content of the basalt fibers is useful for allowing them to be drawn into fibers, by being soft enough for this even at a temperature under the melting point of the basalt.
Is there a reference for that, because it's curious. (As in I really hope you have a reference to read.)
I'd thought I had seen that repeated scarring (from being not broken down) upregulates cellular replacement rate, or concomitant inflammation were suspect.
[1] https://archive.cdc.gov/www_atsdr_cdc_gov/csem/asbestos/how_...
As a 3D-printer user, I flinched.
Putting 3d printing concepts on the table, though, you could definitely see something like a sintered bed printer using a laser to print it, but then you wouldn't get anything close to the standard FDM style print.
- balance an exothermic reaction (self-propagating high-temperature synthesis) to occur just after leaving the nozzle
- externally apply the heat with laser or plasma arc etc
The limit of externally applying heating is when the heat flux has to be so high that some material vaporizes and pops. An exothermic reaction within the material overcomes this limitation.
But I don't think we'd end up with the basalt being very filamentous.
If instead the binder and precursor can melt, react, and expand into a solid that precipitates out because of a super high melting point, the expansion will ensure that you get a fully dense part that can be machined back down.
That's still quite a bit cozier than nylon or PET, of course.
These temperatures make it a significantly trickier engineering problem; ideally, your nozzle would retain its shape at those temperatures despite containing a lot of pressure, not be corroded by the lava you're squeezing through it, not be abraded by any zircon grains that snuck into your melt, and not oxidize on the outside from the temperature when it's exposed to air. I'm pretty sure you could make a zirconia nozzle work if it was thick enough, but I don't think ruby, sapphire, or diamond would last very long. Probably something like inconel would also work, but I don't think 304 or 316 would.
I'd bet inconel and other high temperature alloys would be eroded very quickly, anything that's fluxed enough to melt below 1000C is going to be extremely corrosive. Hot molten sodium hydroxide levels of corrosive. Fun to think about though, a serious materials challenge for sure.
Felsic lavas (and magmas) which melt at those temperatures do not typically contain a lot of alkali oxides, but they do contain some. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calc-alkaline_magma_series#/me... However, ferrous and quasi-ferrous alloys like inconel are among the best choices for alkali corrosion. For example, table 4 in Birgitte Stofferson's dissertation https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/containment-of-molten-n... gives an inconel corrosion rate of 1.06 mm per year in molten NaOH at 600°, which happens through oxidation from oxygen dissolved in the melt. Monel 500 corroded only 5.06 mm per year at 700°.
If you were trying to keep a 100μm hotend aperture within a ±10% tolerance, you could start with a 95μm aperture and replace the hotend when the aperture had expanded to 110μm. At 1mm/year those 15μm would be 5 days of printing time, which seems like a usable hotend lifetime. Presumably printing in lava rather than 100% NaOH would extend the lifetime further.
> Basalt Woven Textile has high corrosive and chemical resistance to the influence of a corrosive media: salt solutions, acid solutions and particularly alkali liquids. The specific strength of basalt fiber exceeds the strength of alloyed steel by a factor of 2,5 and the strength of glass fiber by a factor of 1,5. Heat-insulating items made from basalt fiber combined with inorganic binding agents may be used by temperatures up to 700°С. In addition there is a range of compositions consisting of basalt rocks that have a higher thermal stability – up to 800°С.
Not only silicone rubber or resins use much less CO2 and water for fabrication, most of their weight coming from quartz, but they can also be used in a much wider range of temperatures, compatible with that at the surface of Mars (i.e. including very low temperatures and high temperatures).
Silicone resins reinforced with glass fiber are a material commonly used where a wide range of operating temperatures is required, so I am pretty sure that they could also be reinforced with basalt fiber.
Also a more detailed version https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/459340626/Rubbe...
But this seems to be rubber for gaskets, hoses, tires etc. and not fiber reinforced stuff for construction applications.
I can't think of a lot of applications where I'd want any sort of rock as my bearing material but maybe I'm thinking too big.
Considering the reactivity of most textiles compared to something like glass, I would imagine this has tons of utility anywhere you might need a textile in a chemical application.
> mixed with 20% HDPE, a clean plastic composed of carbon and hydrogen
It's much heavier than a normal notebook, and the surface is basically an extremely fine grit sandpaper. It works great with pencils and ballpoints, but wetter pens (gel, rollerball) do not dry as quick. Also, forget fountain pens. You'll be eating away your nib as I write on that paper.
I have a couple of these notebooks, but they sit unused for now.
For example Lamy’s tipping alloy is softer than others, so that polishing becomes excessive to the point of changing nib size. I have an old safari which writes broad after ten years of use (the nib is marked medium).
Pilot and Sailor uses harder tipping alloys. Schmidt is also harder than Lamy, but softer than Japanese counterparts.
(Yes, I have a lot of pens for quite some time :) )
I deliberately polished a nib once, on rough brown paper. Not Lamy, but a Pilot Metropolitan.
You can polish a Lamy by regularly using it. It becomes evident in a couple of months, and becomes buttery smooth in a year. No special treatment is necessary.
While paper feels very smooth to human skin, in fact it's not. If it was perfectly smooth, no pen or pencil could write on the surface (e.g.: pencil on a whiteboard).
Since the point of a pen nib is extremely small, even a small weight concentrates to that point and the nib tipping is under a lot of pressure even when you don't press while writing. As a result, when combined with the paper surface, the nib is polished slowly.
Again, this is very depending on the tipping alloy used by the manufacturer, and the result is different between manufacturers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinylon [2] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/northkor...
The basalt fiber OP describes is not organic at all. It sounds more like asbestos actually.
Heavier than carbon fiber and kevlar with lower tensile strength than both.
So, no, not unless it's much cheaper.
<insert meme about bullet proof vests not being fireproof here>
(Can sew; choose not to replace buttons generally, because: lazy)
The killer application most probably UAV drone since it's more affordable than carbon fiber.
For drone you want lightweight, robust against weather elements and strong material, and at the same has electromagnetic (EM) transparency so not to disturb its wireless control and communication signal. Carbon fiber however, is not EM transparent material.
Interestingly where carbon fiber's failure mode is instant, failing catastrophically (like say chalk), basalt will be more gradual (like say wood), in some use cases that's an advantage.
Overall though its still not mass produced, uncertain if it will ever reach scale.
If interested in fibers and composites, the YouTube channel Easy Composites is really interesting / educational. For example you can use flax fiber.
It also has one very interesting property that carbon fiber doesn't: it's not conductive. This means, for example, that you can put it in an MRI machine and get signal back. You can't do that with carbon fiber, which shields the return RF signals and gives you a dark image, but doesn't damage anything. Basalt weave composites are basically completely transparent on an MRI.
(For the same reasons, it also can be microwaved successfully. Carbon fiber can not be microwaved. Do not microwave real carbon fiber or carbon fiber composites.)
So, should we use it to make a submarine to visit the Titanic?
Being flexible and non conducting is useful.
Basalt does not burn, so its main competition is glass fiber, not organic fibers.
Also, those 3 mentioned by you are currently quite expensive in comparison with other fibers.
Say, is Carbon in your statement a trademark?
Seriously, how much else of the world's technology would you summarily do away with, because you simply don't see the point?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devitrification#Devitrificatio...
Oven gloves? Anti-stab vests? Gloves for working with strong chemicals?
One use that fascinates me is with foamed concrete (literally mixing concrete with a foaming agent) can be used to create cheap lightweight, insulating blocks, slabs or pours. While it shouldn’t be considered “structural” (low compressive strength), it can be quite durable and withstand and dissipate very energetic impacts when blended with chopped fibers (like basalt). The exact use will effect the ultimate blend and resulting density.
Not a typical material for sure, but I do see it come up in some countries when someone is having to DIY a lasting shelter. For a lot of situations it’s quite a sensible choice, and much healthier than spray foams. Depending on how open/closed the cells end up and freeze thaw cycles, protection from water saturation may be needed.
This combination of materials is also sold as prefabricated bullet stops for training, meant for retaining lead in an alkaline environment: https://www.terrancorp.com/sacon
Finally \../