Flexible and transparent composite nanofibre membrane that was fabricated via a "green" electrospinning method for efficient particulate matter 2.5 capture

Jiaxin Cui; Tao Lu; Fanghua Li; Yulin Wang; Jiandu Lei; Wenjing Ma; Yan Zou; Chaobo Huang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2020.08.075

Flexible and transparent composite nanofibre membrane that was fabricated via a "green" electrospinning method for efficient particulate matter 2.5 capture

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2021 Jan 15;582(Pt B):506-514. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.08.075. Epub 2020 Aug 25.

Authors

Jiaxin Cui¹, Tao Lu¹, Fanghua Li¹, Yulin Wang¹, Jiandu Lei², Wenjing Ma³, Yan Zou⁴, Chaobo Huang⁵

Affiliations

¹ Joint Laboratory of Advanced Biomedical Materials (NFU-UGent), College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University (NFU), Nanjing 210037, PR China.
² Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, and MOE Engineering Research Center of Forestry Biomass Materials and Bioenergy, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, PR China.
³ Joint Laboratory of Advanced Biomedical Materials (NFU-UGent), College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University (NFU), Nanjing 210037, PR China. Electronic address: mawenjing529@126.com.
⁴ Department of Mechanics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China. Electronic address: yanzou039@hust.edu.cn.
⁵ Joint Laboratory of Advanced Biomedical Materials (NFU-UGent), College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University (NFU), Nanjing 210037, PR China. Electronic address: huangchaobo@njfu.edu.cn.

PMID: 32911399
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.08.075

Abstract

Air particulate pollution from ever-increasing industrialization poses an enormous threat to public health. Thus, the development of a green air filter with high efficiency and performance is of urgent necessity. In this study, we introduce a new effective air filtration membrane that can be used for outdoor protection. The air filter's composite nanofibre materials were prepared from polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-sodium lignosulfonate (LS) via a "green" electrospinning method and thermal crosslinking. The addition of LS helped increase the PM_2.5 removal efficiency compared to that of a pure PVA nanofibre membrane. The pressure drops of the electrospun PVA-LS membranes exceeded those of the pristine PVA air filter. The remarkable air filtration performance was maintained even after 10 cycles of circulation filtration. In addition, the PVA-LS composite nanofibre membrane exhibited excellent mechanical properties and transparency due to the introduction of LS. This study provides new insight into the design and development of high-performance and high-visibility green filter media, which include personal protection and building screens.

Keywords: Air filtration; Electrospinning nanofibre membrane; Green; Pressure drop; Sodium lignosulfonate.