Effect of solution concentration in microfiltration properties of PLA mats produced by solution blow spinning

摘要

In order to remediate the difficulty of access to safe drinking water by 1/3 of the world population, mats produced by solution blow spinning (SBS) have a great potential for use in liquid filtration due to their small pores and high porosity, being capable of filtrating water by retaining particles and even microorganisms. In this context, this work aims the production and characterization of poly (lactic acid) mat obtained by SBS to be morphologically, thermally, and mechanically evaluated, as well as to observe water flux properties. The correlation between structure-processing-properties is an important part of the work, which shows that lower concentration of polymeric solution leads to mats with smaller average fiber diameter, greater crystallinity, impacting on their greater tensile strength. The water flux performance shows that mats obtained from higher polymer concentration solutions present less resistance to the water flow, which indicates larger pore diameters.