The aim of the present study was to first fabricate an electrospun PVC nanofiber web and then assess its applicability in sampling and measuring the concentration of airborne crystalline silica by comparing analysis results with a commercial PVC membrane filter under different ranges of airborne silica concentration. A filtration performance comparison was also made between an electrospun PVC web with nano-sized fibers and a commercial PVC membrane filter. Overall, the measured concentration of silica by the electrospun webs was 1.022 times higher than that of the commercial PVC filter in all studied ranges of silica concentration and the nanofiber media had higher filtration efficiency and lower pressure drop compared to the PVC membrane filter. This can be considered to be due to the lower fiber diameter and greater porosity (obtained from the 2D SEM image) of the electrospun nanofiber webs. This makes them suited for air pollutant sampling and determining its airborne concentration.

Introduction: The applicability of Nanofiber (NF) membranes in air sampling of pollutants for the purpose of determining the airborne concentration has received little attention around the world. The present study aims to optimize the fabrication of NF membrane for the of air sampling application. Materials and methods: The polyvinyl chloride NF membranes were fabricated using needle-based solution electrospinning technique. The experimental design was prepared by Design-Expert v7.0 and data analysis was done by Central Composite Design (CCD) base on Response Surface Methodology (RSM) technique. The ability of the fabricated membranes in air sampling applications was performed by sampling of airborne crystalline silica by them using the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH7602) method and then comparing with the commercial PVC membranes. Results: The fabricated NF membranes had a mean porosity of 31.60% compared to a porosity of 25.1% in the case of commercial Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) membranes. The electrospun NF membranes had mean pressure drop of 194.23 Pa, which is lower than the 204 Pa pressure drop of commercial PVC filters. The mean concentration of silica sampled by the electrospun NF membrane was 0.14 mg/m3 while this was 0.03 mg/m3 for commercial PVC membrane. The difference concentration of crystalline silica sampled by NF and commercial PVC membranes had the strongest relationship with the electrospinning solution concentration (r=-0.785, p>0.05). Conclusion: The NF membrane has high performance in sampling the crystalline silica dust from the air stream compared to commercial PVC membranes.