Face masks have become an everyday topic during the Covid 19 pandemic and have been mass produced and sold globally. Every company is doing its best to come up with various production techniques to make compliant, high-quality face masks that can deal with Covid19. From all the technologies seen, the meltblown process has aroused great interest in the mask manufacturing industry.
Face Masks As Melt Blown Cloth Non-woven
Melt blown cloth mainly uses polypropylene as the main raw material, and the fiber diameter can reach 1 to 5 microns. There are many gaps, the structure is fluffy, and the folding resistance is good. These ultrafine fibers with a unique capillary structure increase the number of fibers per unit area and the specific surface area.
Make the meltblown cloth have good filtration, shielding, heat insulation and oil absorption. It can be used in air and liquid filter materials, insulating materials, absorbent materials, mask materials, thermal insulation materials, oil-absorbing materials, wet wipes and other fields.
The filter material is a melt-blown polypropylene microfiber with randomly distributed knots bonded together, the appearance is white, smooth, 0.5-1.0 material soft fiber denier, the random distribution of fiber fibers provides more opportunities for thermal bonding .
In this way, a melt-blown gas filter material with a larger specific surface area and a higher porosity (≥75%) is produced. After extremely high filtration efficiency, the product has the characteristics of small resistance, high efficiency, and large dust holding capacity.
Nonwovens consist of oriented or random fibers. It is called cloth because of its appearance and certain product characteristics. Non-woven fabrics have the advantages of moisture-proof, breathable, flexible, light weight, non-combustible, easy to decompose, non-toxic and non-irritating, rich in color, high in quality and low in price, and recyclable. For example, with polypropylene (pp material) pellets as raw material, melting, spinning, spreading, hot pressing, and coiling are produced in one continuous step.
Non-woven characteristics:
Non-woven fabrics have no warp and weft. They’re super easy to cut and sew, and they’re lightweight for easy styling.
Because if it is a fabric that can be formed without spinning and weaving, just analyze or orient or randomly arrange the short textile fibers or filaments to form a web structure, and then we use traditional mechanical, thermal bonding or chemical methods. The method needs to be strengthened.
It’s not interwoven with yarn, but the fibers are directly connected together by physical methods, so when you glue your name on the clothes, you will find that it can’t pull a single thread. Non-woven fabrics have broken through the traditional textile principles, and have the characteristics of short process flow, fast production speed, high output, low cost, wide application, and multiple sources of raw materials.
Melt blown production
Melt blown cloth is used in the manufacture of masks (surgical masks and respirators), insulation materials and oil absorbing materials.
Meltblowing produces microfibers that allow fabrics up to 1 to 5 microns in diameter and supports microfiltration.
The ultra-thin fabric increases the surface area of fibers per unit area, making the middle layer of the mask soft, permeable and breathable.
Meltblown cloth is the heart of any surgical or respiratory mask; it neutralizes heat and enhances oil absorption.