I'm planning on making an iron jacket with a gap of about 1.5 inches around this retort to insulate. Please suggest a good insulating material to fill the gap, most preferably locally available in rural communities, cheap and efficient. The temperature around the retort reaches about 500 degree Celsius. Any relevant papers and/or your personal experience on this would be greatly appreciated.
The best material would be finely ground charcoal mixed 3:1 to heat resistent cement. Mix it thoroughly with water an fill it into the gap. If you don't have cement, you could use clay or lime both at one part for 5 parts of charcoal.
Clay mixed with some sand or even just whatever soil you have would also work quite well (difficult to find heat resistant cement in rural India). If you have any ceramic pottery nearby, they would have waste ceramic blankets. Those or vermiculite work very beautifully.
I use Vermiculite. It is stable until above 1000 deg celsius and has a very light weight. It is also quite cheap in comparison to other materials of that class such as chamotte, which would be the second choice for your application.l
Thank you for your responses, I'll try vermiculite.
Dear Deoyani madam, which would be better clay mixed with sand or vermiculite?
Vermiculite definitely if you can get it. Clay plus sand is a good option if you don't have access to vermiculite or ceramic blanket.
I checked a local supplier here, and it's not expensive as well. Thanks :)
Rice husk ash or char. Has a strong stable shape.
1.5 inch for the thickness of any insulating layer for these Ts is smallish.
Good luck!
Thank you Roland, in your view, what would be the optimal thickness of the insulating layer?
My carboniser is insulated with 10 cm rockwoool. Same process Ts. For calculation use the thermal conductivity, presumably available on internet.
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