Capezza, Antonio José
- Institutionen för växtförädling, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
- Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH)
Sammanfattning
The onset of coronavirus pandemic has sparked a shortage of facemasks in almost all nations. Without this personal protective equipment, healthcare providers, essential workers, and the general public are exposed to the risk of infection. In light of the aforementioned, it is critical to balance the supply and demand for masks. COVID-19 will also ensure that masks are always considered as an essential commodity in future pandemic preparedness. Moreover, billions of facemasks are produced from petrochemicals derived raw materials, which are non-degradable upon disposal after their single use, thus causing environmental pollution and damage. The sustainable way forward is to utilise raw materials that are side-stream products of local industries to develop facemasks having equal or better efficiency than the conventional ones. In this regard, wheat gluten biopolymer, which is a by-product or co-product of cereal industries, can be electrospun into nanofibre membranes and subsequently carbonised at over 700 degrees C to form a network structure, which can simultaneously act as the filter media and reinforcement for gluten-based masks. In parallel, the same gluten material can be processed into cohesive thin films using plasticiser and hot press. Additionally, lanosol, a naturally-occurring substance, imparts fire (V-0 rating in vertical burn test), and microbe resistance in gluten plastics. Thus, thin films of flexible gluten with very low amounts of lanosol (
Nyckelord
Facemasks; Coronavirus; Gluten; Electrospinning; Bio-based membranes
Publicerad i
Science of the Total Environment
2020, volym: 736, artikelnummer: 139611
Utgivare: ELSEVIER
SLU författare
Globala målen (SDG)
SDG3 God hälsa och välbefinnande
SDG12 Hållbar konsumtion och produktion
UKÄ forskningsämne
Polymerteknologi
Publikationens identifierare
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139611
Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/106915