Abstract
Particulate matter (PM) pollution has raised serious concerns for public health. Although outdoor individual protection could be achieved by facial masks, indoor air usually relies on expensive and energy-intensive air-filtering devices. Here, we introduce a transparent air filter for indoor air protection through windows that uses natural passive ventilation to effectively protect the indoor air quality. By controlling the surface chemistry to enable strong PM adhesion and also the microstructure of the air filters to increase the capture possibilities, we achieve transparent, high air flow and highly effective air filters of ~90% transparency with >95.00% removal of PM2.5 under extreme hazardous air-quality conditions (PM2.5 mass concentration >250 μg m(-3)). A field test in Beijing shows that the polyacrylonitrile transparent air filter has the best PM2.5 removal efficiency of 98.69% at high transmittance of ~77% during haze occurrence.
Highlights
Particulate matter (PM) pollution has raised serious concerns for public health
We found that when the surface chemistry of the air filter is optimized to match that of PM particles, that the single fibre capture ability becomes much more than the existing fibrous filters
We have demonstrated that electrospun PAN nanofibres can be highly effective transparent PM filters because of its small fibre diameter and surface chemistry
Summary
As the fibre diameter increased from B200 nm to B1 mm, the removal efficiencies of PAN air filters with the same transmittance of 70%. Quantitative analysis of the air penetration was carried out by investigating the pressure drop (DP) of the transparent PAN filter with different levels of transmittance. (b) PM2.5 removal efficiencies of PAN, PVP, PS, PVA transparent filters at different transmittances. (c) PM10–2.5 removal efficiencies of PAN, PVP, PS and PVA transparent filters at different transmittances.
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