Abstract
Particulate matter (PM) and airborne viruses bring adverse influence on human health. As the most feasible way to prevent inhalation of these pollutants, face masks with excellent filtration efficiency and low press drop are in urgent demand. In this study, we report a novel methodology for producing high performance air filter by combining melt blown technique with corona charging treatment. Changing the crystal structure of polypropylene by adding magnesium stearate can avoid charge escape and ensure the stability of filtration performances. Particularly, the influence of fiber diameter, pore size, porosity, and charge storage on the filtration performances of the filter are thoroughly investigated. The filtration performances of the materials, including the loading test performance are also studied. The melt blown materials formed by four layers presented a significant filtration efficiency of 97.96%, a low pressure drop of 84.28 Pa, and a high quality factor (QF) of 0.046 Pa−1 for paraffin oil aerosol particles. Meanwhile, a robust filtration efficiency of 99.03%, a low pressure drop of 82.32 Pa, and an excellent QF of 0.056 Pa−1 for NaCl aerosol particles could be easily achieved. The multi-layered melt blown filtration material developed here would be potentially applied in the field of protective masks.
Highlights
Particulate matter (PM) and airborne viruses have gained increasing attention in air filtration field [1]
PP pellets with a melt flow index (MFI) of 36 g 10 min−1 were provided by Shanghai SECCO Petrochemical Company Limited (Shanghai, China)
The results showed that the porosity of six kinds of nonwovens was large, and there was no signifi‐ cant difference, which conformed to the characteristics of melt blown nonwovens with high porosity
Summary
Particulate matter (PM) and airborne viruses have gained increasing attention in air filtration field [1]. Masks are usually composed of nonwovens produced via spunbond, needle-punch, through-air bonding, electrospinning, and melt blown technologies [4,5,6]. Spunbond, needle-punch and through-air bonding nonwovens usually serve as the cover layer or the inner lining of the mask. There are still some disadvantages to restrict the development of electrospun material, such as high pressure drop, low strength, solvent residue, and difficulties for industrialized manufacturing [10,11,12] For these reasons, till melt blown nonwovens are the most successful materials for constructing the core filter of the mask and the quality of masks is mostly determined by the filtering performance of melt blown nonwovens
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