Plastic bottle waste has detrimental effects to the environment. Hence, there is an increasing need to discover new, innovative ways to recycle and harness them for high-value engineering applications. This work presents for the first time, a simple, practical and scalable approach to fabricating recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) aerogels for fire-related applications, heat and sound insulation and oil spill cleaning applications. The rPET aerogels were successfully developed from recycled PET fibers and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and glutaraldehyde (GA) cross-linkers using a freeze-drying process. The effects of various PET fiber concentrations, fiber deniers and fiber lengthson the rPET aerogel structures and multi-properties were comprehensively investigated. The developed rPET aerogels showed a highly porous network structure (98.3–99.5%), ultra-low densities (0.007–0.026 g/cm3), hydrophobicity with water contact angles of 120.7–149.8°, and high elasticity with low compressive Young’s modulus (1.16–2.87 kPa). They exhibited superior thermal insulation capability with low thermal conductivities of 0.035–0.038 W/m.K, which are highly competitive with recycled cellulose and silica-cellulose aerogels and better than mineral wool and polystyrene. The acoustic absorption results were also found to outperform a commercial acoustic foam absorber across a range of frequencies. The PET aerogel has superior thermal conductivity and stability when coated with fire retardant chemicals. It can withstand temperatures of up to 620oC, providing up to seven times more heat protection than the thermal lining, the section responsible for the bulk of the heat protection used in existing firefighter coats. Using our cost-effective surface modification methods, the PET aerogels can also be used for other novel applications. E,g., when incorporated with various methyl groups for oil-spill cleaning application, they have high oil absorption capacities of 79.4g/g and can absorb oil 3 times faster than existing commercial sorbents and cellulose-based aerogels. When coated with an amine group, they can absorb quickly carbon dioxide from ambient and have a similar carbon dioxide absorption capacity up to 66 g CO2/kg. The PET aerogels can also used for absorbing carbon monoxide and other toxic gases .

Recycling plastic bottle waste into novel aerogels for high-value engineering applications

2019 Spring National Meeting

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