EurekAlert May 18, 2021
A team of researchers in the US (George Washington University, UC Riverside, US Naval Academy) designed and fabricated electrospun air filters using ultrafine nanofibers (∼300 nm) which have much smaller pore size in comparison to the surgical mask and cloth masks. They used a coronavirus strain served as a SARS-CoV-2 surrogate to generate aerosols for filtration efficiency tests. The air filters showed excellent performance by capturing up to 99.9% of coronavirus aerosols, which outperformed many commercial face masks. They found that the same electrospun air filter or face mask removed NaCl aerosols equivalently or less effectively in comparison to the coronavirus aerosols when both aerosols were generated from the same system. Their work paves a new avenue for advancing air filtration for controlling SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission. The filters hold promise for applications in personal protective equipment and the indoor environment…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE