WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Good afternoon everybody and thank you very  much for giving us the opportunity to present   00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:11.840 our research titled Prototype for Medical Mask  Using a Novel Antimicrobial / Antiviral Biofilter   00:00:11.840 --> 00:00:17.600 Material. I am Gloria Porto, Associate Professor  at the Wood Science and Technology department   00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:23.840 at West Virginia University. And here is the team  that is working in this project: Dr. Rakesh Gupta   00:00:24.400 --> 00:00:31.120 CoPI, Dr. Edward Sabolsky, CoPI as well, Dr.  Sushant Agarwal, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, Dr. Rosaysela   00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:40.960 Santos and our graduate student Kevin Sivaneri.  So let's see. Let me move this. There you go. 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:46.960 The synergetic efforts to perform these projects  are coming from three different departments and   00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:52.320 colleges at West Virginia University: the College  of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design,   00:00:53.040 --> 00:00:57.840 the College of Engineering, and  the college of Health Sciences. 00:00:58.400 --> 00:01:06.960 So now considering that there is an important  increase of healthcare's associated infections in   00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:13.200 hospitals due to the increased load of diseased  patients and they lack in proper and effective   00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:19.920 protection for the medical community. The common  personal protection equipment are disposable,   00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:25.840 non-degradable, singly use items vulnerable  to penetration by microorganisms.   00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:32.720 And also the common type of particulate  filtering facepiece respirators are made of   00:01:32.720 --> 00:01:39.840 non-degradable non-woven polypropylene fiber  and removes 95 percent of airborne particles.   00:01:40.720 --> 00:01:48.560 So our main goal is to develop a novel biofilter  that will be a non-woven material prepared   00:01:48.560 --> 00:01:54.880 with polylactic acid fibers in combination with  nanocellulosic fibers, which in turn will be   00:01:54.880 --> 00:02:02.480 coated with copper nanoparticles. So the final  material will be able to remove 99.999 percent   00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:10.960 of airborne particles and will have antimicrobial  properties and those are going to be provided by   00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:17.920 the application of copper nanoparticles. So  the central hypotheses of this project are   00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:23.200 that by coating efficiently and  quickly bionano composite filaments,   00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:29.600 polylactic acid plus cellulose nanofibers  with copper nanoparticles, we will reach   00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:36.640 the effectiveness of these particles towards  killing 99.999 percent of bacteria and viruses.   00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:42.400 And the second is considering the diameter of  the nanocellulosic materials that is smaller   00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:47.920 than the common size of the new coronavirus  COVID-19 which is spherical with a diameter   00:02:47.920 --> 00:02:55.600 of approximately 129- 125 nanometers so it is  suspected that the viruses can be retained in   00:02:55.600 --> 00:03:01.360 the biofilter prepared with an optimum and well  distributed amount of nanocellulosic material. 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:09.760 So to move fast we printed a prototype of a mask  in a 3D printer using two different filaments-   00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:16.160 polylactic acid that you can see here in white and  polylactic acid reinforced with wood particles.   00:03:16.160 --> 00:03:20.640 So in this design, we are focusing our  attention in developing our biofilter   00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:27.760 that will be incorporated here. So in the  pictures on the right you can see some examples of   00:03:27.760 --> 00:03:32.560 3D printed specimens prepared  with a polylactic acid and wood,   00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:38.000 however our attention right in this presentation  will be in the biofilter that will be here. 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:42.400 So, in the preparation of our bio  filter we are using two approaches   00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:45.120 electrospinning and forcespinning processes. 00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:50.400 In the electrospinning process, electric forces  are used to produce the fibers and here you can   00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:57.120 see some examples of polylactic acid fibers  produced right and here you can see different   00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:04.400 magnifications of these fibers and it is suspected  right that the porosity that you can observe here   00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:10.000 can help us to for a better incorporation  of the antimicrobial copper nanoparticles. 00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:15.600 So in the case of forcespinning process,  centrifugal forces are used to generate fibers   00:04:15.600 --> 00:04:20.880 and here also you can see the final porosity  right generated for this specific process. 00:04:22.880 --> 00:04:28.720 So, we have been also following different  approaches in order to incorporate copper   00:04:28.720 --> 00:04:33.760 nanoparticles on the fibers and  one of them is using a master batch   00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:38.960 copper polylactic acid provided by a  Chilean company. And here you can see   00:04:38.960 --> 00:04:45.280 also that the particles right on the surface of  the fibers correspond to copper that we analyze   00:04:45.280 --> 00:04:50.640 and of course confirm that there are copper  nanoparticles on the surface of these fibers. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:58.320 So regarding to testing, we are using again a 3D  printing process to optimize a filtering device   00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:01.040 that will be used for all the specific tests that   00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:07.520 are related to our biofilter in terms of  breathability, filtration, and fit test. 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:15.840 So finally, our ongoing work is combining our  polylactic acid fibers with nanocellulosic fiber   00:05:15.840 --> 00:05:19.600 and copper nanoparticles and determining  their antimicrobial properties.   00:05:20.320 --> 00:05:26.240 And almost in parallel right we are starting  with the full characterization of the biofilter   00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:29.200 following standards presented in this slide. 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:37.680 So with that, I am finishing. Thank you very much  for your attention and thank you NSF for giving   00:05:37.680 --> 00:05:43.680 us for providing funds to execute this project.  So thank you again and if you have any question,   00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:50.720 I will be on the chat answering and my email  address is also presented here. Thank you again.