id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-102315-ncjdsbn4	Nazeeri, A. I.	An Efficient Ethanol-Vacuum Method for the Decontamination and Restoration of Polypropylene Microfiber Medical Masks & Respirators	2020-04-16		.txt	text/plain	5764	281	54	It is currently believed that these masks and respirators cannot be cleaned with 70 to 75% alcohol-water solutions, as past wet/dry experiments show that filtration efficiency can drop by ~40% after the first such treatment. The mechanism seems to be the removal of water molecules adsorbed on the fiber surfaces, a hypothesis which is supported by two independent observations: (A) the filtering efficiency increases non-linearly with the weight loss during drying, and (B) filtration efficiency shows an abrupt recovery as the vacuum pressure drops from 13 to 6 mBar, the range physically attributable to the removal of adsorbed water. We report here the discovery that decontaminating polypropylene microfiber filters in a 70% v/v solution of ethanol and deionized (DI) water, using standard medical procedures including air drying, does not permanently damage the microfibers as has been suggested 3, 4, 7 . We describe the easily constructed experimental setup that we use for measuring filtration efficiency, present results with 70% v/v ethanol treatment and the effectiveness of vacuum drying on .	./cache/cord-102315-ncjdsbn4.txt	./txt/cord-102315-ncjdsbn4.txt