Nano-sized fabric produced by electrospinning for clothing protection, ventilation and comfort -

Abstract

Conventional protective clothing used to prevent the exposure of workers to hazardous aerosol particles subjects the worker to heat stress because of the low air permeability which reduces clothing air ventilation. A compromise between high contaminant impermeability, and relatively high air permeability is well established by the nanotechnology. Indeed, nanotechnology includes the use of nano-sized materials for fabricating very thin fibers capable of forming a highly porous mesh characterized by a large surface-to-volume ratio to improve the clothing protection for better worker comfort. The fabrication of nanofibers is achieved by the electrospinning process which consists of producing nanofibers fabric by subjecting a polymer solution to an electric field. The nanofiber web produced presents high filtration efficiency and relatively high air permeability (significant ventilation). By varying the processing parameters of electrospinning such as the polymer concentration, the electric field, the time of electrospinning, and the volumetric flow rate, the properties of electrospun fibers can be manipulated. These properties such as the fiber diameter, the fiber thickness, and the porosity affected the filtration performance of the filter as well as its air permeability at some air face velocity. Therefore, optimization of electrospinning process for producing nanoweb with desirable air permeability by investigating the effect of electrospinning parameters on the air permeability presents a great interest. The reason is that this optimization will actually prevents the time cost in investigating the air permeability and the morphology of the nanofiber web, to come up with the desirable filtration efficiency without affecting the wearer thermal comfort. This is achieved by developing a systematic model that relates the electrospinning processing parameters to (i) the filtration of aerosol particles through the electrospun nanofiber for a range of particle diameter and face velocity and to (ii) the air ventilation