The Effectiveness of the Microbial Barrier Knitted Homemade Facemasks

Abstract

Facemasks significantly reduce the dispersion of respiratory droplets that potentially carry the virus (COVID-19) when a person speaks, coughs or sneezes. Double jersey knitted fabrics made of cotton, Tencel and Viscose were made and designed. This paper aims to examine the effectiveness of single-layer and double-layer knitted masks by the microbial barrier permeability method. This method was used in a targeted manner because Bacillus Bacteria with a size of 0.5 µm in diameter is used to determine the permeability of the microbial barrier, which includes aerosol particles and approaches the size of the virus of 0.1 µm in diameter. The permeability results of the microbial barrier are presented concerning the number of layers and the raw material composition. Porosity (%) was also deter-mined based on microscopic images. The results of the microbial barrier effectiveness test showed an ineffective microbial barrier for 1 layer of the knitted fabric. However, stacking the mesh in 2 layers in-creased the microbial barrier efficiency by 70%. Functional design, combining layers of fabric and insertion of a previously developed antibacterial tencel nonwoven filter enables complete imper-meability to microorganisms, i.e. an effective microbial barrier.

Keywords

• facemask
• microbial barrier
• knitted fabric
• cellulose