Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by droplet (5-10µm) and aerosol (<5µm) that exhaled by someone who infected SARS-CoV-2 when they breath, talk, cough, and sneeze (Prather et al, 2020). Mask has important role to prevent this virus to spreading. Therefore, it is necessary to develop mask performance with a focus on engineering the material to provide better mask filtration efficiency than current masks such as N95 mask or medical mask. This innovation aims to create and improve the performance of mask by paying attention to filtration efficiency. The method used is (i) Engineering alternative material for mask layer by taking into account the filtering capacity, in this case using aerogel-graphene. Aerogel has an average pore diameter of 20nm (Aegerter et al, 2011) and graphene has an average pore diameter of 550nm (Kowalczyk et al, 2017). (ii) CFD simulation on masks with ANSYS software. (iii) Validation of the simulation results was carried out by comparing the test results on N95 mask and medical mask. The simulation results show that the filtration efficiency of aerogel-graphene mask is greater than that of N95 mask and medical mask as evidenced by particle tracking in the simulation by injecting 12110 particles. For particles measuring ±5μm, aerogel-graphene mask, N95 mask, and medical mask have a filtration efficiency of 48% (particle trapped=5819), 42% (particle trapped=5131), dan 39% (particle trapped=4831). For particles measuring ±3μm, aerogel-graphene mask, N95 mask, and medical mask have a filtration efficiency of 40% (particle trapped=4837), 34% (particle trapped=4071), dan 23% (particle trapped=2826 For particles measuring ±1μm, aerogel-graphene mask, N95 mask, and medical mask have a filtration efficiency of 15% (particle trapped=1818), 14% (particle trapped=1736), dan 12% (particle trapped=1446). This innovation is expected to improve the performance of masks in reducing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: Aerogel, Graphene, SARS-CoV-2, CFD, ANSYS software.