Highly porous polymeric fibrous membrane for efficient removal of particulate matter

Abstract

Air pollution has wreaked havoc on ecosystem including human’s life widely. Specifically, particulate matter (PM) have induced growing adverse effects on public health, also threatening ecosystems. Various efforts have been made to reduce the generation of fine dust or to remove it from the air. To effectively remove particulate matter (PM), nanofibrous membrane from the electrospinning has been investigated. In particular, polymer nanofiber membranes have been widely studied to mitigate the aftermath of PM pollution, attributed to their versatile tunability and excellent filtration property. However, most research of fibrous membrane as an air filter have mainly concentrated on removing PM well. Although there are newly functionalized fibrous membrane such as reusable and washable filter or self-powered filter by utilizing triboelectricity and so on, few attempts to alleviate air resistance exist. In this study, membrane composed of porous polyacrylonitrile(PAN) fibers were obtained to capture PM tellingly. The porosity and permeability of fibrous membrane was controlled with ratio of secondary polymer in electrospinning precursor to understand relationship among air resistance, permeability and porosity. The Porous PAN membranes composed of porous PAN nanofibers exhibit superior air permeability and porosity compared to Pure PAN membrane composed of nonporous PAN fibers. It will enable us to design and manipulate the optimized porous membrane structure with an excellent quality factor to effectively eliminate PM.