Mairead Hogan

Designing and Handmaking a Carbon Filter Mask

Global Context - Scientific and Technical Innovation

Goal - To design a protective mask and donate it to those less fortunate

Introduction

My personal project is going to be about designing and handmaking a carbon filter mask and after making it and hand sewing it, I will then donate it to the poor and the homeless. In order for me to be able to do this product and for it to become successful, I will need to research and learn how to hand sew and to stitch by hand, I will also need the right materials that are long lasting. I have found a few websites and video tutorials that will provide information on how to handmake a carbon filter mask, or the materials that are needed and could be used for this project.

The reason I chose this topic to do for my personal project is that since we’re in the middle of a pandemic and we’re it’s quite dangerous and risky to be around people and especially strangers and different people, I thought it would be a good idea to design a protective mask and donate it to the homeless because I presume that they don’t really have much protection from this virus, so I will hand stitch and hand sew carbon face masks. I have found out that gas masks are similar to these carbon masks, for gas masks the bad or polluted air goes in and there’s first an aerosol filter which removes particulate matters from the gas that goes in, and after the aerosol mask there’s an ASZ charcoal filter, and they filter gas through a bed of activated carbon (carbon processed to have small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area available for adsorption which means holds solid molecules of a gas or liquid as a thin film, or chemical reactions.) And after the ASZ charcoal filter there’s the charcoal dust filter, the charcoal filter can be cleaned and reused. After that process then the filtered air is what you breath in. What I will do that’s linked to that is that I want to use the Charcoal dust filter but the ones I found are 3 layers and I think that’s going to be too thick, I will also be using the Aerosol filter as that is what does most and filters the air. And then I will also be using Kente cloth to cover it and I’ll be putting a little of my culture into these masks. Kente cloth is a Ghanaian cloth that has different patterns and is made of interwoven cloth strips of silk and cotton. ‘Initially, the distance coupled with the strength of exhalation could be investigated, but then face coverings made from different materials and critically with different numbers of layers could be tried. The design of face-covering that made it hardest to divert the candle flame will probably provide the best barrier for projecting the virus forward and through the face covering.’