Electrospun nanofibers services on filter paper

Filtration is any of various mechanical, physical or biological operations that separate solids from fluids (liquids or gases) by adding a filter medium through which only the fluid can pass. The filter may be paper, cloth, cotton-wool, asbestos, glass-wool, unglazed earthenware, sand, or other porous material. Nanofibers, with smaller thickness and higher surface area than regular fibers, have enormous applications in filtration. Electrospinning (also called electrostatic fiber spinning) has been one of the promising processes to produce continuous nano-scale fibers from both synthetic and natural polymers. A nanofiber layer on the surface of the filtration media captures dust particles better than clean filters without a nanofiber layer. Because the nanofiber layer media captures dust on the surface reducing depth loading, it cleans more completely and operates at a lower pressure differential across the filtration media reducing energy demands. Nanofiber performance layer media can be produced on a variety of substrate materials and built into many different filter configurations. Because of the nanofiber efficiency layer and surface loading characteristics, nanofiber layer filters last significantly longer than traditional commodity filter elements. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is a versatile polymer used to produce large variety of products including ultra-filtration membranes, hollow fibers for reverse osmosis, fibers for textiles and oxidized PAN fibers.