Industry Trends & New Developments

Included will be consideration of ASHRAE 241, PFAS elimination efforts, and PFAS targeted drinking water standards on filtration/separation media and processes.

Melt blowing is a technology that has been commercially used for the past three decades to produce microfibers. Because of their extremely high specific surface area, meltblown fabrics are used as high efficiency filter media for aerosols and liquids, scaffolds, sorbents, artificial blood vessels, wound dressing materials etc. Using melt blowing process, it is also possible to produce nanofiber fabrics without use of any solvent at very high production rates. That is why meltblown fabrics have been extensively used in Personal Protective Fabrics. Charged melt blown fabrics are also part of the N95 masks and this was a topic of major concern during the current pandemic. Recently University of Georgia (UGA) has established a laboratory with multiple melt blown pilot lines, Corona charging, mask production pilot line as well as needed characterization facilities. Addressing the issues of sustainability is one of the major focus. Ongoing efforts in UGA in this direction, current research in filter media, as well as the future plans will be presented.