Abstract
Biomass-based aerogel is a new promising environmentally friendly filter material to remove fine particle matter and minimize air pollution. This study aims to investigate the air filtration properties of biomass-based aerogels via tests in a transparent chamber and verification in a real room with a burning smudge stick as a the particle source. The biomass-based aerogel used in this study is made of polysaccharides, protein and waste agricultural by-product (wheat straw). The addition of wheat straw contributes to the increase of surface area and complexity of the biomass-based aerogel pore structure. Compared with other commonly used commercial filtration materials including high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, surgical mask, regular cloth and silica aerogel, biomass-based aerogel K0.9G1.8S3.6WS1.8 shows excellent performance to remove PM 2.5 (99.50%) and PM 10 (99.40%) from the environment. When using the biomass-based aerogel, the filter core sample has a smaller volume and simpler structure than HEPA to achieve the similar filtration performance. The filtration performance of the biomass-based aerogels has been verified with a real room test. The current work demonstrates the high potential of biomass-based aerogels for infiltration application in different fields and provides an avenue to reuse agricultural by-products.
Highlights
Air pollution is one of the main environmental problems in the world and is among the critical challenges facing modern societies
By testing the particle number before and after the flow passing through the materials in an airtight negative pressure environment, Wu et al (2021) studied the filtration performance of biomass-based aerogels of single layer and combined multilayers and the results show that the higher solid concentration of single layer biomass-based aerogel and the combination of aerogel pieces with different pore size distribution contribute to better filtration efficiency
It could be observed that wheat straw is randomly arranged in the pores of biomass-based aerogels
Summary
Air pollution is one of the main environmental problems in the world and is among the critical challenges facing modern societies. It refers to the contamination of the atmosphere by a mix of hazardous substances, particulate matter (PM) from natural sources and human activities. Particles with a diameter less than 2.5 μm, which is only 3% of the diameter of a human hair, are known as PM 2.5. They are easier to penetrate deep into the human lungs and some may even enter the bloodstream and circulatory system, causing cough and asthma, or even morbidity and mortality
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