The problems with cumbersome insulation designs become very pronounced in the manufacturing cleanroom environment, where thousands of feet of fairly narrow reactor piping form a congested maze of plumbing once the insulation has been installed.

One of the newer materials that provides a new option in cleanroom insulation is a PVDF-based, high-purity foam. This specialty plastic material is a closed-cell foam that in a thickness of only one-quarter inch offers chemical and heat resistance as well as other properties that are equivalent to eight times of what conventional foam provides for cleanroom applications. In other words, one-quarter inch of PVDF-based insulation is equivalent to two inches of open-celled insulation.

This cleanroom tip was taken from “Trimming Down Cleanroom Insulation,” which appeared in the May 2013 issue of Controlled Environments.