Formation and characterisation of air filter material printed by melt electrospinning

A novel fibre printing apparatus was developed, employing the principles of additive printing and melt electrospinning, and used to form fibre mats. Five commercially available polyamide and polyolefin-based polymers were tested for the production of high-efficiency media for air filtration using melt electrospinning. The mats were tested for PM1 filtration efficiency. Polyamide-based polymer was revealed as the most useful for printing, producing mats with optimum morphology (median fibre diameter of 5.04 mu m and interquartile range of 4.35 mu m). A total of 11 samples from 68 originally prepared ones met the requirements of PM1 class filters. The filtration efficiency (ePM(1)) ranged from 55% to 80%, while the quality factor varied between 0.013 and 0.037 Pa-1, with a comparatively low basis weight (86.03-376.81 g/m(2)), indicating the high potential of such media for applications in the air filtration sector.