Engineered fabric covers — insulation core (needle mat / silica mat / stone wool) sewn inside a coated-fabric skin, closed with snap buttons or straps, made to the geometry of the valve, flange, turbine or pump they fit.
Anything that gets OPENED: valves, flanges, strainers, pumps, turbines, manways, exchanger heads. Fixed lagging on these gets cut off at the first maintenance and never comes back — surveys keep finding the same bare valves for that reason.
Standard: ASTM C1695 governs fabrication of flexible removable/reusable blanket insulation; cores per their own material standards; skins: silicone- or PTFE-coated glass fabric.
Valve ≈ 0.6 m of equivalent bare pipe (standard survey practice): 730 W standing loss. A 50 mm needle-mat removable cover cuts it to 85 W (88% less), surface 37 °C. Annually: ≈6,286 kWh fuel, €314, 1.15 t CO2 — per valve. Plants routinely survey dozens to hundreds of these.
| Material | λ W/m·K | Loss W/m | Surface | Saving €/m·yr | t CO2/m·yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-glass needle mat | 0.050 | 106 | 36 °C | €351 | 1.3 |
| Silica needle mat / fabric | 0.055 | 117 | 37 °C | €346 | 1.3 |
| Stone wool (mineral wool) | 0.052 | 112 | 37 °C | €348 | 1.3 |
| Aerogel blanket | 0.027 | 61 | 29 °C | €373 | 1.4 |
DN100 pipe at 250 °C, 50 mm insulation, per metre of pipe; bare loss 826 W/m. λ at mean temperature; € and CO2 per metre·year at €0.05/kWh, 8000 h, 82% efficiency. Method: ASTM C680 simplified (h=10).
