Development and manufacturing of innovative, low-cost, mass-produced, environmentally friendly filters and masks protecting against COVID-19

鉴于预防CONVID-19的口罩需求激增，英国对新口罩制造厂的投资巨大。专业面具材料的短缺表明，需要在英国也制造这些材料。在这项艰巨的努力中，我们组建了一支由行业合作伙伴组成的团队，其中包括面具制造商、设备制造商和测试公司。我们的项目旨在将过滤器和口罩的制造引入英国，降低成本，并利用低成本、丰富和环保的材料开发卷到卷的添加剂制造工艺。这个项目的主要想法是，在测试后，选择一系列天然纤维布料作为添加剂生产的基材。这种底物将被覆上一层新型的多孔层，其官能团可以捕获新冠肺炎和其他高危病毒。静电纺丝被提出作为我们的添加剂制造技术，涂层(S)和布基的组装将通过过滤病毒来保护它，这取决于孔隙率、孔径、纤维取向、涂层厚度和涂层和布料的官能团。拟议的项目包括以下任务：(A)分子模拟，以筛选材料和官能团与病毒尖峰的结合能；(B)连续渗透力学模拟，以研究病毒在多孔材料组件中的迁移，以及口罩或空气流过滤器中用于呼吸的气流；(C)将静电纺丝发展为连续的卷对卷过程；(D)材料和产品测试。

Given the surge in demand for masks to protect against CONVID-19, there is huge investment for new mask manufacturing plants in UK. A shortage of specialised mask materials points to the need to also manufacture these materials in UK. Enlisted in this herculean effort, we have assembled a team of industrial partners, including mask manufacturers, an equipment manufacturer, and testing companies. Our project aims at bringing manufacturing of filters and masks to the UK, lowering the cost and developing a roll-to-roll process of additive manufacturing using low-cost, abundant and environmentally-friendly materials. The principal idea of this project is to select, after testing, a range of natural-fibre cloths, to be used as substrate for additive manufacturing. Such substrates will be coated with a novel porous layer with functional groups trapping the COVID-19 and other high-risk viruses. Electrospinning is proposed as our additive manufacturing technique, where the assembly of coating layer(s) and cloth substrate will protect against the virus by filtering it, depending on porosity, pore size, fibre orientation, coating layer thickness and functional groups of coating and cloth. The proposed project includes the following tasks: (a) molecular simulations to screen materials and functional groups in terms of their binding energy with the virus spike; (b) continuum infiltration mechanics simulations to investigate the virus migration through the porous material assembly, as well as the air flow for breathing in the case of masks or air flow filters; (c) development of the electrospinning to a continuous roll-to-roll process; (d) material and product testing.