Cummins, ORNL join in face mask filter venture
A collaboration between Cummins Inc. and the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has resulted in Cummins developing the production capacity for enough filter media to supply more than 1 million face masks and respirators per day for use in U.S. health care facilities.
As a leading manufacturer of air, fuel and lube filtration products for heavy-duty diesel engines, Cummins began early this year to explore ways to use their filtration production technology to support health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, ORNL was searching for ways to scale up production of face masks with equipment used to mass produce precursor material for carbon fiber production at its carbon filter facility.
ORNL’s research team had been working with the inventor of N95 filter media, Dr. Peter Tsai, to develop a novel in-line charging device that could be placed on the precursor production line to electrostatically charge the melt-blown material made of polypropylene. By electrostatically charging the material with millions of microfibers layered on top of each other, the filter can remove more than 95 percent of submicron particles and viruses like COVID-19.
“We reached our target goal in only a few weeks on pilot scale melt blowing capability at the CFTF and had the capability to produce filter media for 9,000 masks per hour when we connected with Cummins for potential technology transfer and scale up,” said ORNL’s Merlin Theodore, director of the carbon center.