Filtration performance of needle-punched nonwoven air filter media through dyeing process

Viscose fibre has been dyed with various dye concentrations and the needle-punched nonwoven fabrics are prepared using the dyed fibre, keeping machine parameters the same. The physical properties, such as tenacity & bursting strength, and functional performance properties, such as mean flow pore size, filtration efficiency & pressure drop, are measured. It is found that the dyeing plays a big role in altering the overall performance of the needle-punched nonwoven. The tenacity of the needle-punched nonwoven fabric is reduced as dye concentration is increased. Filtration efficiency is measured for three different sizes of particles, namely 3µm, 5µm, and 10µm. For all three cases, the filtration efficiency is increased initially till 3% dye concentration and beyond that it is reduced.