Preparation of high-temperature resistant poly (m-phenylene isophthalamide)/polyacrylonitrile composite nanofibers membrane for air filtration

Nowadays, many industrial factories usually emit a large amount of dusty waste gas with high temperature in daily production, which will bring huge threat to the environment and human health if they are not disposed properly. However, the existing removal technology for high-temperature dusty gas have some shortcomings in practice, especially for the low efficiency on extremely small particles of filtration. Electrospinning is a technique commonly used to produce ultrafine nanofibrous filter. By combining high-temperature resistant materials with electrospinning technology can give high-temperature resistant materials the small size effect of nanofibers. It is expected to prepare a new kind of air filter material which performs high-precision filtration, excellent mechanical property and high-temperature resistance. This study focuses on polyacrylonitrile (PAN) with high spinnability and high-performance poly (m-phenylene isophthalamide) (PMIA) fiber to prepares PMIA/PAN composite nanofiber membranes. By adjusting the combination of mass fraction and mass ratio of the two organic solutions, PMIA/PAN composite nanofiber membranes were prepared to own the excellent mechanical properties, stable filtration performance and better high-temperature resistance. The experiments show that the breaking strength and elongation at break of PMIA/PAN composite nanofiber membrane with a combination of mass fraction of 11–12 and a mass ratio of 9:1 are 2.683 MPa and 37.36% respectively. Furthermore, the filtration efficiency of PMIA/PAN composite nanofiber membranes can maintain over 99% after a series of heat treatment. [Display omitted] •By blending the solutions to prepare PMIA/PAN nanofiber membranes integrated the advantages between the two components.•The PMIA/PAN composite nanofibers membrane not only maintains a filtration efficiency above 99% after a series of heat treatments but owns great mechanical property.•Using the self-made needleless electrospinning machine to prepare PMIA/PAN composite nanofibers membrane, which can realize the mass production.