Scientists from Singapore and Vietnam decided to turn the hundreds of millions of tons of pineapple waste accumulated in their countries into something useful, in this case isolation for their Pina Colada cocktail.

Their new material not only provides better cooling of drinks than many commercial coolers, but can also serve as the final disposal site for pineapple waste in the world.

Pineapples make up about 20% of the global tropical fruit production, with more than 25 million tons of product annually harvested. But more than half of this volume is formed by-products such as leaves, peel and seeds.

To find use for these residues, the researchers mixed pineapple fibers, which they chopped in a blender, with polyvinyl alcohol as an adhesive agent and deionized water as a solvent.

Then they treated the mixture with ultrasound and heated it in the oven at 80 ° C for 2 hours. The resulting suspension was then cooled before freeze drying.

The result was a pale yellow airgel, which has a light, flexible and more than 96% porous property, which makes it ideal as an insulating material from heat and sound.

When researchers wrapped a sheet of pineapple airgel around a bottle of water, they found that the gel could provide three times better thermal insulation than commercially available alternatives, they reported this month in Materials Chemistry and Physics.

Moreover, pineapple gel also acted as a sound barrier; in another test, the gel handled noise better than Basmel, a popular form of soundproofing panel.