Nano-composite material for respiratory filters against byssinosis

Abstract

Byssinosis is a type of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is very common in textile cotton workers due to the inhalation of fine cotton dust, gram negative bacteria originated from cotton dust and their endotoxins for the long period of time repeatedly. In this research, a three layer composite respiratory filter was developed for byssinosis prevention by using the combination of polypropylene (PP) based nonwoven layers and electrospun chitosan nanofibres (CSNF). Electrospinning process optimisation showed that smooth chitosan (CS) nanofibre production was achieved from 1% to 3.5% concentration of chitosan solution, while 4% and above concentration of chitosan could not produce nanofibres due to high viscosity and high surface tension of solutions. Performance of all the developed respiratory filter samples was evaluated by anti-bacterial resistance, protection efficiency against aerosol ranges from 100nm to 2.5μm, and quality factor. The developed filter samples with CSNF coating showed more than 99% filtration efficiency with a low pressure drop of 71.6 Pa and a high quality factor value of 0.082. The antibacterial performance of CSNF layers was 91% against the Enterobacter agglomerans. Conclusively, results showed that the developed nanocomposite material can potentially help to reduce byssinosis. Furthermore, plasma surface modification has been selected to improve the surface activeness of the PP outer layer for the improvement of surface capturing mechanism. The outer surface of all the samples were activated by using low pressure plasma treatment. Results showed that all low pressure plasma treated samples showed higher filtration performance as compared to untreated samples due to more effective capturing mechanism. However, impact of surface modification was not significant in 50gsm meltblown filter samples and observed more significant in spunbonded 70gsm and 100gsm filter samples. Furthermore, decay of plasma treatment impact was also analysed by using drop shape analysis. It has been observed that the surface modification impact gradually decreases and the material surface changed from hydrophilic to hydrophobic over time.

Date of Award	28 Jan 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Hugh Gong (Main Supervisor) & Jiashen Li (Co Supervisor)