NXTNano, LLC Installing Three Additional HYPR-Spun Nanofiber Production Lines

Four Hundred Million Infected People in India and One Billion At Risk

New Variants in India Could be Trouble

Centrifugal Multispinning Could Be 300 Times Faster Than Electrospinning

Nanofibers for Fit, Function, and Sustainability Pursued at Cornell

 

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NXTNano, LLC Installing Three Additional HYPR-Spun Nanofiber Production Lines

NXTNano, LLC has begun to install three additional HYPR-Spun Nanofiber production lines. The first of the lines is expected to be operational in June, and all three within the year. The new lines will take their total line count to six, and like their existing production lines, the newest equipment will facilitate high volume nanofiber manufacturing up to a maximum roll width of 2.15 meters.

“2020 was an incredible year for NXTNano. We saw rapid adoption of the technology in to a number of new markets, and more importantly we have a social obligation to continue serving our mask, respirator, and indoor air purification customers who have taken up the fight against COVID.  In existing markets we expected COVID to produce a pronounced slowdown, but that never materialized.  As a result of the growth and new projects moving to commercial sales, the time has arrived for us to add capacity” said Andrew McDowell, NXTNano, LLC’s Director of Sales.  

The number of markets commercially consuming nanofiber has continued to exhibit strong growth, and according to industry reports, is expected to continue this trend.  Industry wide forecasts for CAGR are expected to be above 36% though 2023. This level of growth, combined with their unique focus on application know-how has allowed NxtNano to lead the pack in both innovation and economics based adoption. 

“I’ve spent nearly my entire career in nonwovens and filtration, over 30 years now, and the last nine months have been unique to anything I’ve seen before” Said Alan Smithies, NxtNano’s VP of technology. “The growth has not been without challenges, but I firmly believe we as a company have stepped forward and embraced them. Our head count is now over 80 people, more than two and a half times what it was in 2019, and we are putting out full truckloads of material every day. Our customers have been absolutely phenomenal in working with us to execute innovative products the market desperately needed, and for that, I must give them credit. These new lines are our commitment to ensuring they continue to succeed.

 

Four Hundred Million Infected People in India and One Billion At Risk

India became the country with the world’s second highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, surpassing Brazil, and now second only to the United States. But experts say that low testing in the country suggests the real total is far higher than both.

India now has 13.5 million confirmed cases, compared to the U.S.’s 31.1 million. The country is currently in the midst of a second wave of the virus, with confirmed daily infections reaching an all-time high of 168,912 on Monday.

But the official numbers only tell part of the story, according to multiple studies. “From what has been reported, I think India definitely has the most infections in the world,” says Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy.

The reason is that even now, testing is only detecting a fraction of the cases that actually exist in India’s massive population of 1.3 billion people. A serological survey conducted between August and September 2020, which measured the presence of the virus in a sample group of the Indian population, estimated that there were between 26 and 32 infections for every reported case of the virus.

“For every 30 infections, you’re pretty much only picking up one as a case,” says Laxminarayan, who says a similar disparity likely still exists now, even though India’s testing capacity is higher than last year, because of the signs pointing to the fact that the virus is running rampant in the population. “I would still apply the 30-fold undercount even now,” he says.

If accurate, that math would put the real number of COVID-19 infections to date in India somewhere around 400 million — more than the entire population of the United States. “400 million infections in a country the size of India still means that a billion people are not infected,” Laxminarayan says. “So there’s still plenty of room for infection, even with a lot of people [already] being infected.”

At the start of the pandemic, health experts had predicted that India, with a population more than four times the size of the U.S., would quickly become the world’s worst-hit country—especially given that China, the only country in the world with a larger population, mounted an effective campaign to suppress the virus. But bad outbreaks in the U.S. and Brazil meant India never officially reached that point.

India’s first wave of COVID-19 infections peaked in September, then began a steady decline. New infections began to tick up again in March, and every day since April 7 the country has recorded more new cases than at the height of its first wave last year. India has also begun a vaccination drive, announcing on Sunday that more than 100 million doses have been administered, mostly to over-60s and frontline workers.

Monday’s milestone came as thousands of Hindu devotees, many of them maskless, gathered at the city of Haridwar on the banks of the River Ganges to mark the Maha Kumbh Mela festival. Health experts had called for the festival, one of the largest religious gatherings in the world, to be canceled. But authorities said the pilgrimage would go ahead for those able to produce negative COVID-19 tests.

Photographs from Monday showed large crowds gathering to bathe in the Ganges, with police powerless to enforce social distancing measures. “We are continuously appealing to people to follow COVID-19 appropriate behavior. But due to the huge crowd, it is practically not possible,” said a police officer in Haridwar, according to Al Jazeera.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in India stands at just over 170,000, the fourth-highest in the world, behind the U.S., Brazil and Mexico. But those numbers too might not tell the whole story. Even before the pandemic, as few as 21% of deaths in India were recorded by a medical professional along with a cause of death, according to the World Health Organization. “If you’re undercounting cases by a factor of 30, is it possible that we’re undercounting deaths as well?” says Laxminarayan. “Of course. For 80% of deaths, we have no medically identified cause of death at any given time.”

As a percentage of the total number of cases, the official death numbers put India’s case fatality rate at around 1.25%, lower than the United States (1.8%), Brazil (2.6%) and others. The Indian government has focused on these numbers in public pronouncements as evidence of success in tackling the virus. Just as the country’s second wave began to take off in March, a report by India’s health ministry cast the situation in positive terms. “Today we have least number of COVID-19 cases, highest recovery rate, least number of deaths due to COVID-19 and now moving towards a Greater Win by developing Vaccines against the dreaded disease,” it said.

Part of the reason for India’s low death rate is its young population, more than half of whom are under the age of 25. Younger people are less likely to suffer severe reactions to COVID-19, or to die from the disease.

Experts worry that the Indian government has used statistics pointing to high recovery rates from the virus to paint a picture of Indians as a whole being more immune to COVID-19. But calculations by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy show that Indians between the ages of 30 and 70 are in fact more likely to die from the disease than people of similar ages in China, the U.S., and Brazil. “It is a myth that Indians have a lower fatality rate,” says Laxminarayan. “That is simply not true. It is not borne out by the data.”

The result, Laxminarayan fears, is that the Indian population has been encouraged to be complacent. “The declarations of victory were not really helpful in terms of getting people to continue to take the virus seriously,” he says. “And that’s largely responsible for the attitudes that have brought the virus back.”

New Variants in India Could be Trouble

After genome sequencing of over 10,000 COVID-19 cases in India, researchers have discovered a new variant with two new mutations which may be better at evading the immune system.

In 15-20% of samples from the Indian state of Maharashtra (the state accounting for 62% of cases in the country) a new, double mutation in key areas of the virus has been detected. These are now known as the E484Q and L452R mutations.

Both these mutations are concerning because they are located in a key portion of the virus – the spike protein – that it uses to penetrate human cells. Spike proteins attach via a “receptor binding domain”, meaning the virus can attach to receptors in our cells.

These new mutations include changes to the spike protein that make it a “better fit” for human cells. This means the virus can gain entry more easily and multiply faster. Given what we have seen with other similar mutations, it might also make it harder for our immune system to recognize the virus due to its slightly different shape. This means our immune system may not be able to recognize the virus as something it has to produce antibodies against.

The emergence of these new variants has only been possible because of the continued viral replication in areas with high circulation.

Though the Indian government has said the data on the variants circulating in India (including this new Indian variant and others including the UK strain) are not sufficient to link them to the rapid increase in the number of cases in the country, we think it’s the most likely explanation. The country had managed to bring down the rate in February, but a sudden increase in the number of reported cases is now being reported.

The implications of these developments are greatly concerning – not just for India, but for the rest of the world. Mutations can result in 20% more in-hospital deaths, as we witnessed during the second wave in South Africa. This is because some mutant variants have the ability to spread faster, resulting in sudden surges and, therefore, an overburdened health system.

But there’s hope. Places around the world with higher vaccination coverage such as the UK and Israel are witnessing a steady decrease in cases.

Most of the currently approved vaccines around the world have been found to evoke an immune response to some extent against multiple variants. But no trials have yet been undertaken on the effectiveness of vaccines against these new Indian mutations.

To make it difficult for the mutant strains to develop vaccine resistance, we have to ensure wider and faster vaccine coverage across the world.

Apart from vaccine manufacturers’ efforts to update the composition of vaccines to better deal with new strains, it is important to contain transmission across the world. Countries can use the World Health Organization’s SARS-CoV-2 Risk Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to help identify, monitor and assess variants of concern, swiftly.

To establish a direct link between a variant and a steep rise in cases in a short time, it is important to use genomic sequencing to link clusters together. But unless contact tracing is done meticulously, it isn’t easy to do so.

It is also important to understand the mechanisms involved in the infectiousness and virulence of the newer variants. For this, lab models are needed to mimic spread and virulence mechanisms efficiently.

To combat the consequences of mutations in India, its pandemic response will have to incorporate several measures. Genomic surveillance will have to be proactive and coincide with the epidemiological investigation of the cluster of cases for early identification and swift action.

As some variants can escape naturally induced immunity, vaccine manufacturers in India will need to develop better vaccines to cover these new variants. Ongoing surveillance and containment measures need to be strengthened to prevent the emergence of new variants by minimizing viral replication.

And finally, swift and rapid vaccine coverage is not only necessary but essential for ensuring any modest levels of success in tackling this pandemic.

 

Centrifugal Multispinning Could Be 300 Times Faster Than Electrospinning

KAIST researchers have developed a novel nanofiber production technique called 'centrifugal multispinning' that will open the door for the safe and cost-effective mass production of high-performance polymer nanofibers. This new technique, which has shown up to a 300 times higher nanofiber production rate per hour than that of the conventional electrospinning method, has many potential applications including the development of face mask filters for coronavirus protection.

Nanofibers make good face mask filters because their mechanical interactions with aerosol particles give them a greater ability to capture more than 90% of harmful particles such as fine dust and virus-containing droplets.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the growing demand in recent years for a better kind of face mask. A polymer nanofiber-based mask filter that can more effectively block harmful particles has also been in higher demand as the pandemic continues.

'Electrospinning' has been a common process used to prepare fine and uniform polymer nanofibers, but in terms of safety, cost-effectiveness, and mass production, it has several drawbacks. The electrospinning method requires a high-voltage electric field and electrically conductive target, and this hinders the safe and cost-effective mass production of polymer nanofibers.

In response to this shortcoming, 'centrifugal spinning' that utilizes centrifugal force instead of high voltage to produce polymer nanofibers has been suggested as a safer and more cost-effective alternative to the electrospinning. Easy scalability is another advantage, as this technology only requires a rotating spinneret and a collector.

However, since the existing centrifugal force-based spinning technology employs only a single rotating spinneret, productivity is limited and not much higher than that of some advanced electrospinning technologies such as 'multi-nozzle electrospinning' and 'nozzle less electrospinning.' This problem persists even when the size of the spinneret is increased.

Inspired by these limitations, a research team led by Professor Do Hyun Kim from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST developed a centrifugal multispinning spinneret with mass-producibility, by sectioning a rotating spinneret into three sub-disks. This study was published as a front cover article of ACS Macro Letters, Volume 10, Issue 3 in March 2021.

Using this new centrifugal multispinning spinneret with three sub-disks, the lead author of the paper PhD candidate Byeong Eun Kwak and his fellow researchers Hyo Jeong Yoo and Eungjun Lee demonstrated the gram-scale production of various polymer nanofibers with a maximum production rate of up to 25 grams per hour, which is approximately 300 times higher than that of the conventional electrospinning system. The production rate of up to 25 grams of polymer nanofibers per hour corresponds to the production rate of about 30 face mask filters per day in a lab-scale manufacturing system.

By integrating the mass-produced polymer nanofibers into the form of a mask filter, the researchers were able to fabricate face masks that have comparable filtration performance with the KF80 and KF94 face masks that are currently available in the Korean market. The KF80 and KF94 masks have been approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of Korea to filter out at least 80% and 94% of harmful particles, respectively.

"When our system is scaled up from the lab scale to an industrial scale, the large-scale production of centrifugal multispun polymer nanofibers will be made possible, and the cost of polymer nanofiber-based face mask filters will also be lowered dramatically," Kwak explained.

This work was supported by the KAIST-funded Global Singularity Research Program for 2020.

Nanofibers for Fit, Function, and Sustainability Pursued at Cornell

Even as the vaccine roll-out picks up speed, the end of face masks in public could be a year or more away as questions of transmissibility post-vaccine and effectiveness against emerging strains remain. One thing is clear: when it comes to fit, function, fashion, and sustainability, current face masks leave a lot of room for improvement.

Multiple ongoing research projects in the College of Human Ecology’s Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design (FSAD) aim to improve the efficiency, breathability, comfort and environmental costs of face masks. The six projects, five funded through the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, highlight the depth and breadth of the research done in the only Ivy League department that brings fiber scientists, design experts, fashion creatives, fiber artists, and social scientists together in one program.

Dropped or discarded disposable face masks are a commonplace sight these days. Made of petroleum-based polypropylene fibers, disposal surgical and N95 masks are bad for the environment and the wildlife in it. Their singular function is to provide a physical barrier against viruses and bacteria, which can collect on the outside and inside of the mask.

Associate Professor Tamer Uyar, his postdoctoral researcher Asli Celebioglu and undergraduate students in his lab are developing biodegradable nanofiber mask inserts with naturally antibacterial materials to lighten the environmental costs of masks and improve their functionality.

Uyar lab postdoctoral researcher Asli Celebioglu and undergraduate students are developing biodegradable nanofiber mask inserts with naturally antibacterial materials to lighten the environmental costs of masks and improve their functionality.

The nanofiber inserts have a nano-porous structure with pore sizes that are much smaller than the size of viruses and bacteria, making them an excellent physical barrier to COVID-19. In addition, these nanofibrous mask inserts have antibacterial properties, offering users protection against bacteria they encounter or exhale throughout the day.

“Face masks can be a good platform for bacteria to attach itself, not only creating health concerns, but they can also produce bad odor, which makes the face mask uncomfortable,” Uyar said.

There are already masks that boast antimicrobial properties, but they come with a steep cost to the environment.

“They use silver nanoparticles, which is a very good antimicrobial agent, but at the same time, it creates a huge problem for the environment when it gets into the water stream,” Uyar explained. “There are many good bacteria out there that clean lakes, rivers and soils from pollutants by bioremediation, but the silver nanoparticles kill them. We’re making our nanofiber inserts biodegradable and antimicrobial without using silver nanoparticles, which makes them better for the user and for the environment.”

The students in Uyar’s lab are at work producing nanofiber inserts that he hopes to distribute for wear-testing this spring. He said combining his biodegradable and antimicrobial nanofiber inserts with the innovations in design and fit taking place in the rest of the department could result in masks that block 99 percent of airborne particles, making them more effective than the current gold-standard N95 masks.

One such innovation is a project from Associate Professor Juan Hinestroza to create personalized masks using face scans. Hinestroza’s lab would create an algorithm that takes a three dimensional object (the face) and translates it into a two dimensional item (the mask) which, when worn, becomes a three dimensional item. The scans would be sent to a manufacturing machine, such as an online retailer or even the local copy shop, that would make a mask customized to the unique characteristics of the user. This would make the masks more effective, more comfortable, and decrease waste.

“Instead of having to mass-produce masks that don’t fit anyone very well, and I’ve seen orders for 10 million masks that are all the same when we all have different faces, we could create a mask that fits the individual’s profile perfectly,” Hinestroza said.

He is applying for funding to pay students to work on the complicated math required to create the algorithm. Hinestroza sees this kind of on-demand fabrication technology as the future of clothing manufacturing that will provide items fit perfectly to individual shapes and sizes, while decreasing the massive amounts of waste created by the fashion industry and improve conditions for factory workers.

Understanding the mask-wearing experience: The first of the projects to be completed was led by Associate Professor Denise Green along with Senior Lecturer Frances Kozen and Lecturer Catherine Blumenkamp, and will be published in a forthcoming open-access issue of the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal focused on COVID-19.

They conducted a demographically representative survey of 18-24-year-olds back in August, asking respondents about their mask-wearing habits, preferences, and experiences. The survey results revealed a wide-range of information, from how mask-wearing or not-wearing lined up with geographic location, race, gender, or political affiliation, to what improvements respondents would most like to see in mask design and construction. Over half of those surveyed wanted more breathable fabrics and a little over two-thirds wanted a better fit.

“Understanding user experience will help us to improve design,” Green said. “Through better design – which brings comfort, efficacy, and aesthetics together – we’ll improve mask compliance and help to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.”

Kozen is working on another project with Associate Professor Huiju Park and Senior Lecturer Kim Phoenix wear-testing three popular styles of masks to elicit data on comfort factors that affect user willingness to wear masks for a full day.

“Wear testing is used to evaluate consumer perceptions of garment comfort,” Kozen said, “as laboratory measures of textile properties or fit are one-dimensional and may not correlate well with the actual experience of moving in a garment over a period of time. It is a helpful tool for development of performance apparel and could be employed to assess designs or materials developed by other teams in FSAD.”

Kozen said they are about halfway through data collection, asking about issues like heat build-up, fogging, difficulty enunciating clearly through masks, and breathability. 

Better masks for children: Children have a high risk of self-contamination when taking off and putting on their masks due to limited dexterity. They have difficulty maintaining social distancing in classrooms and their respiration rate is 30% higher than adults. That means longer exposure to airborne particulates and more chance to spread the virus to other people.

Project leader Huiju Park is working with Frey, Assistant Professor Fatma Baytar, Goodge and other graduate and undergraduate students on four goals: improving the design of children’s face masks, developing a head form and size guidelines based on anthropometric data, identifying optimal fabric and layer structure, and producing educational materials on best practices and fabric choices for caregivers, childcare workers, teachers and healthcare workers.

Utilizing an online survey, Park collected data on some of the biggest concerns and complaints from people responsible for caring for children ages 4-6 in one capacity or another. The major issues reported related to sizing and fit.

“Simply downsizing an adult face mask does not work,” Park said. “Children’s face and head shape proportions differ significantly from adult proportions. Children experience fit issues with commercial face masks, mostly revolving around general oversizing, lack of depth for facial features, and few shaping considerations around the sides and bottom of the mask that could help to prevent air gaps.”

Park’s team is working to develop methods for evaluating mask fit by using 3D body scanning technology and 3D virtual modeling, which will give them data to improve fit.

Using the simulated breathing apparatus developed by Frey and Goodge, adjusted for the higher respiratory rate of children, this project tested the filtration efficacy of available masks for children--data that can be used to further improve the design of masks.

While there has been some mixed messaging and lack of information around the risks of COVID-19 in children, Park pointed out that children experiencing even a mild infection can spread the virus and there are still too many unknowns on the effects to children.

“Infected children go through not only some typical symptoms, such as fever and breathing difficulty, but some experience Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which is a very rare, new, unknown symptom. Unfortunately, there is no proven medicine or effective medical solution to this rare symptom as it is just so new. Nobody seems to have enough knowledge about this symptom and how it would impact children’s health from short-term and long-term perspectives. This is another reason that offering adequate protection through improved design of children’s masks is important.”

The silhouette on the right shows air paths (and leakage) to the glasses and the bottom of face masks for children.

Park, an expert in protective and performance apparel, will turn next to creating a children’s face mask design based on the data his team collected along with the results of Frey’s fabric tests.

FSAD Professor and Chair Yasser Gowayed said there are other research programs around the world with projects working to identify and solve the problems and shortcomings of face masks, but none with FSAD’s depth and breadth.

“FSAD is unique because we do not study the problem from a single point of view. We integrate the social impact, the behavioral science and the physical science. This is only feasible because FSAD has scholars in these fields who can speak a common language and work together to present solutions that are not only efficient, but also grounded in reality.”