Making Aerogel At Home: Part 2 Semi - Success

Unfortunately I destroyed the aerogel out of stupidity. I didn't even come to the point of supercritical drying.

[swinfi]

Solvent exchange is to wash out unreacted starting material and replace it with something more volatile (methanol/acetone).

Aerogel, its a solid covalent network with air between not liquid so the liquid needs evaporating off, I'm not sure but I think I remember something about avoiding the phase transition from liquid/gas by going around the supercritical pathway to avoid the gels destruction from surface tension.

[batenkaits]

rather than distilling it try using a solvent to purify it either through recrystallization or making it into a powder and dissolving impurity's