Good afternoon, I have a somewhat out of the ordinary need for a heat reflective coating and was hoping that you might vector me in the right direction. Quantum fabricate sails from mylar film and various structural fibers (carbon, aramid, etc.) by laminating them together under pressure and infrared heat.
In the simplest terms, we lay a film of mylar/adhesive down on a very large (nearly 100’ by 100’), specially prepared very flat concrete surface that has been covered with a layer of linoleum as our work surface. On this first layer of mylar film, we string multiple passes of pre-pregged structural fibers whose density and fiber choice is dependent upon the size of the boat and intended wind range. Over these structural fibers we lay another layer of mylar film/adhesive to fully enclose the laminate. In preparation for laminating, we vacuum bag this whole package to the floor before running the laminator over the top. As you can imagine this requires lots of taping to the floor surface. The laminator consists of a series of infrared heaters to heat up the film/fiber materials to a minimum internal temperature of 115 degrees C to flow the adhesive and then immediately behind that a hard rubber covered metal nip roller runs over the whole package applying several tons of force.
I wanted to explain a little bit of how it works before I got to explaining where your technology might come in. Recent measurements suggest that we are transmitting quite a bit of heat into the linoleum floor and what I would like to investigate is whether improving the reflectivity of the floor would allow us to more easily get heat into and retain heat in the laminate, rather than the floor.
So……… what I am looking for is a reflective paint that I could apply to the linoleum floor that could withstand temperatures for a short period of time on the order of 250 degrees C to reflect our IR heat back into the laminate rather than being so readily absorbed into the floor. The bond between linoleum and paint would have to be robust enough to handle repeated application and removal of masking tape and because it seems inevitable that it will get damaged on occasion, be quickly reapplied on areas that had gone bad. I suppose that a foil with high temperature adhesive to adhere to the linoleum might also work but I worry about maintaining this surface over time. Alternatively, as we may be soon updating the linoleum floor, a reflective surface that could be applied over the flat concrete surface that was sturdy enough to stand up to the rigor of the nip roller under several tons of pressure could be a great solution.
I am sure that this description will fall short of answering all the questions that you may need to know to help guide us so all of my contact information can be found below. Very much appreciate your consideration in this matter.