Preparation of a novel poly (ether ether ketone) nonwoven filter and its application in harsh conditions for dust removal

It has been proved that air filtration is the most effective solution to solve air pollution from the origin. However, as the core filter material in air filter bags, most of fiber materials are not able to maintain their basic performance under the condition of high temperature, high humidity and corrosion. Hence, creating such a new material used in harsh conditions for dust removal has proved to be extremely challenging. In this study, high-performance poly (ether ether ketone) (PEEK) fiber was developed to fabricate a PEEK nonwoven filter (PEEK NWF) which showed outstanding stability under sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide and 250 degrees C high temperature conditions. Moreover, to capture more fine particles, PEEK NWF impregnated with PTFE emulsion (PEEK/PTFE) and ePTFE coated membrane PEEK (PEEK/ePTFE) filter with a sandwich structure were also constructed. PEEK NWF and PEEK/PTFE filters exhibited extremely low filtration resistance (10 Pa, 10.3 Pa) and higher quality factor (0.7036 Pa-1, 0.8222 Pa-1). Compared with PEEK NWF and PEEK/PTFE fillers, PEEK/ePTFE filter displayed higher filtration efficiency for fine particles, and its filtration efficiency for particles size of 2.5 mu m increased from 72.09% to 98.5765% which was close to nanofiber membrane filtration efficiency. The results suggested that PEEK NWF as well as its composites filters could make them promising candidate materials used in harsh conditions for dust removal.