Humidifier Attached Chamber

The electrospinning devices proposed by Inovenso. Ltd allows a high level of flexibility to tailor fiber’s specifications. The environmental parameters impact the morphology and characteristics of the nanofibers. The influence of relative humidity during the electrospinning process on the manipulation of electrospun nanofiber’s mechanical properties was widely investigated for different applications due to the impact on the performance and efficiency of the produced material.

Relative humidity plays an important role as an environmental parameter during the electrospinning process as well as temperature and atmospheric factors. The correlation between electrospun nanofibers and diameters and relative humidity is explained by the rate of solvent evaporation, in which a difference of solvent vapor pressure and partial pressure inside the electrospinning chamber is a served as pulse for solvent volatilization, this gradient inversely increases with the relative humidity. 

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EFFECT OF RELATIVE HUMIDITY ON ELECTROSPINNING

  1. low relative humidity: It can be explained that in a drier condition, the rate of solvent evaporation is increasing and leading to a high polymer concentration, increase of polymer viscosity and decreases the voltage stretching the polymer chains which causes a solidification of the solution at early stages. An optimum humidity then needs to be set to obtain higher stability and promote better fibers formation. The charge accumulation in this case is enhanced leading to a more fiber alignment.
  2.  Higher relative Humidity: the increase of moisture level in the electrospinning chamber leads slow solidification caused by difference in partial pressure of the used solvent and absorbance of fibers to more moisture causing swelling and altering mechanical properties. Beading and fiber’s irregularities are also obtained due to the lack of complete solidifications of the fibers before reaching the collector. The desired morphologies and characteristics are obtained after the right optimization of the humidity level. Charge accumulation is also affected by high level of humidity, an increase of the conductivity on the collector surface occurs leading to a dissipation of the electric field impacting the nanofibers deposition patterns.
  3. The control of the fiber’s morphology is impacted by an optimization of the solvent evaporation rate and bead-on-strings apparition during the capillary breakup of viscoelastic fluid. Control of the relative humidity of the electrospinning chamber, contributes to a variation in nanofibers diameters for the same polymer.

BENEFITS OF INTEGRATING HUMIDITY CONTROL SYSTEMS:

Several benefits can be obtained when using environmental control systems like humidifier and dehumidifier in the electrospinning systems, enhancing the quality and efficiency of the process and final obtained membrane. Here are some key advantages:

  • Improved fiber’s quality and membrane performance

Maintaining optimal humidity leads keeping nanofiber’s uniformity along the process and stability of the diameter’s morphology highly required for precise specifications. Also, a reduced beading is observed in an optimum level of humidity with smoother nanofibers surface.

  • Higher mechanical properties obtained

Controlling the relative humidity also has an important impact on mechanical properties including strength and flexibility of the fibers with consistent performance with improving reliability of the final membrane.

 

  • Optimal solvent evaporation

By controlling the relative humidity of the chamber, an efficient solvent evaporation rate occurs leading to ensure fiber solidification in the right time with the aimed structure with reduce of materials wastes.

  • Electrospinning process stability

Stable and consistent humidity level during the electrospinning process leads to reproducible results, easy to scale up for an industrial level and commercialization applications with reduced variability and fluctuations in fiber’s quality.

  • Increase of the versatility of electrospinning process

The versatility obtained by humidity controls gives the opportunity to test and explore a large scale of polymers and blends for innovative materials with unique properties. 

  • Economic optimization

A high-cost efficiency is calculated by improving fiber’s quality, reducing wastes and optimizing materials uses with enhancing the productivity and stability of the process. Also, this stability and scalability leads to a time saving and reduced troubleshoot occurring or post-processing.