Examination of electric field distribution in a laboratory-built electrospinning device

Abstract

In 2019, Covid-19 pandemic appeared and affected the health of humanity. The virus can spread between people in various ways, but mostly from infected liquid particles. A fundamental method of defense is the use of a face mask in public, however, the efficiency of wearing a mask can be influenced by a number of factors. Most of the masks have a classification based on its filtration efficiency. There are three categories, the FFP1, FFP2 and FFP3, where FFP means „filtering facepiece”. All the 3 types can filter particles down to the size of 0.6 micrometer, but the FFP1's efficiency is 80%, the FFP2's 94%, while the FFP3's reaches 99%. In the USA they use the same categories, but call it KN80, KN95 and KN100. The problem is that the commonly used textile masks do not have a classification, which means that these cannot protect the wearer from being infected. The aim of our research is to improve the filter efficiency of masks, and we have described in this paper the first phase, the construction and testing of the laboratory model. Two cases were considered, with one needle and five needle solutions. During the experiments, the electrode distance was varied. When using more needles, the nanofibers covered a larger area, but there was a greater roughness between the fibers generated. Considering that electrospinning starts after a critical electric field strength, some calculations were performed in COMSOL model.