Recycled PET nanofiber membranes for air filtration

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the air filtration performance of nanofiber mats generated from recycled PET water bottle by the electrospinning fiber production method. The trifluoroacetic acid amount was minimized to prepare the PET solution that can be used in a stable electrospinning process. The electrospinning parameters were optimized and bead free PET fiber mat was produced with an average fiber diameter of 593 ± 182 nm and average thickness of 208 ± 41 $\mu$m. A pneumatic test circuit was developed to test the filtration performance. The recycled PET fiber mats were able to effectively filter out the visible particles from cigarette smoke, however, was unable to filter out the molecules responsible for the smell.