Vacuum panel technology

The barrier film plays an important role in vacuum panel technology since it has the task of minimising air and moisture penetration into the vacuum core. The barrier must be... 

The rapid development of the open cell foam-filled vacuum panel technology has required parallel development and improvements of the analytical techniques necessary to assess VIP performance and reliability. This latter aspect is key for the widespread adoption of the technology. The selection of the best components, foam, bag and adsorbent, as well as the careful control of the manufacturing cycle, minimises the chance of having poorly performing insulating panels. However, since the potential risk of defective seals or microleaks cannot be completely ruled out, several techniques have been developed to either support and establish the VIP manufacturing cycle or to assess their quality after production. 

Thanks to this, vacuum panel technology is becoming a technically viable and cost effective solution to the need to reduce energy consumption in household appliances and in commercial and industrial applications. To successfully achieve this target, additional efforts are necessary to further improve the component quality and reliability (foam, film and adsorbent), to optimise panel production and to reduce costs. 

P. Manini and E. Rizzi, Poster presented at the European Workshop on Vacuum Panel Technology for Super Insulation in Domestic Appliances and Industrial Applications, Milano, Italy, 1998. 

Cost is still the main obstacle to the widespread adoption of this technology. A preliminary qualitative cost comparison between silica and open cell PU, which includes raw material, panel manufacture and panel installation costs [10] shows that a cost reduction of about one-third over silica could be achieved. This has to be improved to bring the cost of the vacuum panel down further, so as to really interest more segments of the insulation industry. 

Current flat-panel display technology primarily revolves aroimd inorganic LEDs, backlit liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and vacuum fluorescent displays. Although these technologies are trim and efficient compared with cathode ray tubes, they can be bulkier and much more power consuming than required for many applications. In many battery-operated devices, such as laptop computers, cellular telephones and other hand-held instruments, the illuminated display is the primary energy consumer. Furthermore, LED displays are expensive to fabricate because of the many individual diodes required to make up an alphabet, each with its own contacts and interconnections. These problems forced researchers to look for other materials. 

A completely different HDTV flat screen technology was revealed to the public in September 2005 when Canon demonstrated flat panel television sets using its surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED). The technology is based on the traditional CRT as used in current television sets. However, in this case the traditional vacuum tubes have been miniaturised to the extent that thousands of them have been packed inside a flat panel display which is between 10 and 12.5 cm thick. In fact there are actually as many electron emitters as there are pixels on the screen - a situation which is claimed to deliver brighter, sharper and clearer pictures with added bonus of having a longer service life than LCD or plasma sets. Other benefits include power consumption up to one-third less than plasma display television sets. 

Flood panel (vacuum technology) A water-cooled, double-walled panel, such as the wall of a vacuum chamber, that is used to remove process heat from the surface. 

Polycold (vacuum technology) A term sometimes used for a cryocondensation (Meissner) coil/panel in the process chamber. Polycold is the company that popularized such traps in the US. 

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