Pore engineering towards highly efficient electrospun nanofibrous membranes for aerosol particle removal

Abstract Electrospun nanofibrous membranes were engineered for aerosol particle removal by controlling the fiber density and alignment across electrospun mats. Electrospun nanofiber membranes were deposited on both, rotatory drum and stationary collectors, to investigate the effect of fiber alignment on filtration performance. Poly(acrylonitrile)/dimethyl formamide (PAN/DMF) solutions were used to produce membranes for applications in air purification. The air filtration performance of as-produced and hot-compacted membranes were systematically evaluated with regard to penetration, pressure drop, and quality factor when subjected to potassium chloride (KCl) aerosol particles in the size-range of 300 nm to 12 μm. The membranes offered air filtration efficiencies in the range of 77.7% to 99.616% and quality factors between 0.0026 and 0.0204 (1/Pa). The samples were benchmarked against commercial filters and were found to exhibit similar quality factors but higher air filtration efficiencies. These results were correlated to differences in pore morphologies and fiber orientation distributions generated from the different processing techniques, which revealed that the alteration of the fiber density is an effective method for enhancing air filtration performance.