Before 1980, the development of thermal insulation materials in China was very slow. A few thermal insulation material factories could only produce a small amount of expanded perlite thermal insulation materials and other products, which could not meet the needs of national construction in terms of product varieties, specifications and quality. Compared with the advanced level of foreign countries, they were at least 30 years behind. For example, before 1980, there were only three perlite enterprises in China, The annual output is about 8000 cubic meters. Since the reform and opening up, the thermal insulation material has made great progress, and has developed into a relatively complete variety of perlite thermal insulation material production and technology system. In 1996, the output of expanded perlite in China was about 6 million cubic meters (about 450000 tons).

The main gap between China's thermal insulation materials and industrial developed countries is as follows: 1. The largest user of perlite thermal insulation materials in foreign countries is the construction industry, accounting for about 80% of the output. However, in China's construction industry, the market has not been fully opened, and its application only accounts for 10% of the output. 2. The overall level of production technology and management level need to be further improved, and the product quality is not stable enough. 3. The lack of investment in scientific research, the lag of applied technology research and product development, especially the slow progress of applied technology research and development of perlite thermal insulation materials in construction for many years have seriously affected the healthy development of thermal insulation materials industry.

It can be seen from the above situation that after more than 30 years of efforts, especially after nearly 20 years of rapid development, China's perlite thermal insulation material industry has developed from scratch, from single to diversified, and from low to high quality. It has formed a relatively complete variety of industries with expanded perlite, perlite thermal insulation board, glass beads, etc The level of production equipment has also been greatly improved, and some products have reached the international advanced level in the 1990s. However, due to China's perlite insulation material industry is not late, the overall level of technology and equipment is low, the application technology in the field of construction needs to be improved, which affects the popularization and application of perlite insulation material to a great extent.