Edrisi Farzaneh, Mahmoudian Mehdi, Shadjou Nasrin
Faculty of Chemistry, Department of Nanotechnology, Urmia University Urmia Iran
Nanotechnology Research Center, Urmia University Urmia Iran.
RSC Adv. 2024 Mar 5;14(11):7303-7313. doi: 10.1039/d4ra00176a. eCollection 2024 Feb 29.
Air pollution has become a major challenge that threatens human health. The use of respiratory filters is one of the proposed solutions. In this study, using polystyrene (PS) fibers and various nanomaterials, improved respiratory filters were fabricated to remove air pollutants. In this context, ZnO nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) integrated into dendritic structures of KCC-1 silica were used to improve the filters' ability to absorb pollutants. For the first time, the removal of gasses by modified filters with a novel polymeric nanocomposite (PS/ZnO-KCC-1) stabilized on the surface of respiratory filters was investigated. Moreover, two different methods including stabilized- and solution-based techniques were used to prepare the filters with different amounts of ZnO NPs and their efficiency was evaluated. All synthesized nanocomposites and developed filters were characterized by FT-IR, FESEM, TGA and XRD methods. The successful stabilization of nanostructures on the fibers was proved and the performance of the fibers was investigated with some tests, such as pressure drop and removal of suspended particles and CO (89%), NO (86%), and SO (83%) gases. PS/KCC-1-ZnO (5%) has better performance than other prepared fibers. The results showed that the removal of suspended particles in the filter containing ZnO and KCC-1 (M5) nanostructures was improved by 18% compared to the filter consisting of polystyrene fibers. The pressure drop increased with the addition of nanostructures and reached 180 Pa in the M5 filter. The filter containing ZnO NPs showed antibacterial activity against () and () as Gram-positive and Gram-negative model bacteria using the Agar disk-diffusion method. Based on the results, the use of improved respiratory filters is recommended as an effective solution for combating air pollution and protecting human health.
空气污染已成为威胁人类健康的一项重大挑战。使用呼吸过滤器是提出的解决方案之一。在本研究中，利用聚苯乙烯（PS）纤维和各种纳米材料，制备了改良的呼吸过滤器以去除空气污染物。在此背景下，将整合到KCC-1二氧化硅树枝状结构中的氧化锌纳米颗粒（ZnO NPs）用于提高过滤器吸收污染物的能力。首次研究了用稳定在呼吸过滤器表面的新型聚合物纳米复合材料（PS/ZnO-KCC-1）对过滤器进行改性后对气体的去除效果。此外，采用了包括稳定化技术和溶液法技术在内的两种不同方法来制备含有不同量ZnO NPs的过滤器，并对其效率进行了评估。所有合成的纳米复合材料和开发的过滤器均通过傅里叶变换红外光谱（FT-IR）、场发射扫描电子显微镜（FESEM）、热重分析（TGA）和X射线衍射（XRD）方法进行了表征。证实了纳米结构在纤维上的成功稳定，并通过一些测试研究了纤维的性能，如压降以及悬浮颗粒和一氧化碳（89%）、一氧化氮（86%）和二氧化硫（83%）气体的去除情况。PS/KCC-1-ZnO（5%）的性能优于其他制备的纤维。结果表明，与由聚苯乙烯纤维组成的过滤器相比，含有ZnO和KCC-1（M5）纳米结构的过滤器中悬浮颗粒的去除率提高了18%。随着纳米结构的添加，压降增加，M5过滤器中的压降达到180帕。使用琼脂扩散法，含有ZnO NPs的过滤器对作为革兰氏阳性和革兰氏阴性模型细菌的（）和（）表现出抗菌活性。基于这些结果，建议使用改良的呼吸过滤器作为对抗空气污染和保护人类健康的有效解决方案。
