Exploration of Ultralight Nanofiber Aerogels as Particle Filters: Capacity and Efficiency

Ultralight nanofiber aerogels (NFAs) or nanofiber sponges are a truly three-dimensional derivative of the intrinsically flat electrospun nanofiber mats or membranes (NFMs). Here we investigated the potential of such materials for particle or aerosol filtration because particle filtration is a major application of NFMs. Ultralight NFAs were synthesized from electrospun nanofibers using a solid-templating technique. These materials had a tunable hierarchical cellular open pore structure. We observed high filtration efficiencies of up to 99.999% at the most penetrating particle size. By tailoring the porosity of the NFAs through the processing parameters, we were able to adjust the number of permeated particles by a factor of 1000 and the pressure drop by a factor of 9. These NFAs acted as a deep-bed filter, and they were capable of handling high dust loadings without any indication of performance loss or an increase in the pressure drop. When the face velocity was increased from 0.75 to 6 cm s(-1), the filtration efficiency remained high within a factor of 1.1-10. Both characteristics were in contrast to the behavior of two commercial NFM particle filters, which showed significant increases in the pressure drop with the filtration time as well as a susceptibility against high face velocities by a factor of 105.

超轻纳米纤维气凝胶（NFA）或纳米纤维海绵是本质上平坦的电纺纳米纤维垫或膜（NFM）的三维衍生物。在这里，我们研究了这种材料用于颗粒或气溶胶过滤开发的价值和潜力，因为颗粒过滤是NFM的主要应用。使用固态模板技术从静电纺丝纳米纤维合成了超轻NFA。这些材料具有可调的分级细胞开孔结构。我们观察到这种材料在最穿透的粒径下高达99.999％的高过滤效率。通过根据工艺参数调整NFA的孔隙率，我们能够将渗透颗粒的数量调节1000倍，将压降调节9倍。这些NFA起到了深床过滤器的作用，能够处理高粉尘负荷，而无任何性能损失或压降增加的迹象。当表面速度从0.75 cms（-1）增加到6 cm s（-1）时，过滤效率仍保持在1.1-10的高水平。这两个特性与两个商用NFM颗粒过滤器的行为形成鲜明对比，后者的压降随着过滤时间的增加而显着增加，并且对高频率工作速度的敏感性提高了105倍。

Published: 2018

Journal ：ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES

Impact Factor：There is no data at this time

Paper link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.8b00455