Fabrication of High-Efficiency Polyvinyl Alcohol Nanofiber Membranes for Air Filtration Based on Principle of Stable Electrospinning

A mass flow matching model(MFMM) was established for studying the stable status of solution electrospinning. The study of the solution droplet status at the needle tip focused on various combinations of applied voltages and injection rates to figure out their influence on steadily fabricating polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) nanofibers prepared from PVA spinning solutions with two different mass fractions(10% and 16%). The results revealed that during the stable electrospinning, the influence resulted from the change of the injection rate approximately canceled out the impact brought by adjusting the applied voltage, leading to almost the same morphology as that of the PVA nanofibers. And the mass fraction of PVA in the spinning solution dominated the structure and the diameter distribution of the electrospun nanofibers. Under stable electrospinning conditions, the composite membrane was produced by depositing PVA nanofibers on the polyethylene terephthalate(PET) nonwoven substrate for an air filtration test. Furthermore, the prepared composite membrane exhibited a high air filtration efficiency(99.97%) and a low pressure drop(120 Pa) for 300-500 nm neutralized polystyrene latex(PSL) aerosol particles, demonstrating its potential as an alternative for a variety of commercial applications in air filtration.