Optimising Fully rPET-Sourced Aerogel Production Using a Sustainable Dissolution-Precipitation Approach

Aerogels were produced exclusively from recycled plastic bottles of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (rPET) by optimising a dissolution-precipitation process at room temperature and applying a product design strategy to improve their sustainability. Using a design of experiments methodology, the systematic assessment of the influence of different factors, namely rPET concentration, co-solvent ratio, and non-solvent quantity, on the key properties of rPET aerogel, namely bulk density, thermal conductivity, and mechanical resistance, was performed. The understanding of the significance of each parameter and the optimisation of a desirability function offered reliable optimum results for the adjustment of the experimental procedure for the reduction in the volume of the most critical solvent, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), by 42.5%. The observed bulk density values were excellent, down to 110 kg·m^-3, and the thermal conductivity was in the range of conventional commercial insulators (38 mW·m^-1·K^-1), positioning this material as a real alternative to conventional thermal insulators. Also, to deeply understand the dissolution/precipitation phenomena, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to support the experimental outcomes.