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Stay one step ahead: Full environmental control
More infoEnvironmental Control
Climate control is critical for producing nanofiber membranes that are uniform and consistent at all times. It is important to note that environmental conditions vary significantly throughout the year depending on the season, which seriously affects the electrospinning process. And if you want to be able to produce the same material (same morphology, properties, etc.) regardless of location and season, you need a high-performance environmental control unit designed specifically for a particular evaporative process such as electrospinning.
At Fluidnatek, we always say that temperature is important, while humidity is critical in the electrospinning process.
Polymers such as PCL, PEO, or PU are quite sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, as are many others. Solvents also behave differently in the electrospinning process when exposed to changes in ambient temperature and humidity. Therefore, maintaining a climatically stable production chamber in an electrospinning system is essential to achieving consistency and reproducibility at all times.
Fluidnatek equipment offers a range of environmental control units specifically designed for the electrospinning process (an evaporative process with unique characteristics), depending on the required versatility and capacity: from environmental control units capable of heating, cooling, drying, and humidifying—which allow for complete flexibility—to more limited and cost-effective models that remain a good choice for certain applications. Depending on their needs and budget, each user chooses the option that best suits their situation.
More specifically, Fluidnatek’s Environmental Control Unit (ECU) option for our electrospinning equipment enables heating, cooling, drying, and humidifying the environment inside the equipment’s chamber, thereby providing the user with adaptability and versatility to navigate the viable climate space (psychrometric chart) and achieve the optimal temperature and relative humidity points for each process. In other words: absolute environmental control. In addition, Fluidnatek’s ECU is equipped with filtration stages, including a HEPA filter at the final stage of the air intake, to provide an ultra-clean environment inside the electrospinning equipment chamber.
As an example of the vital importance of climate control, the SEM images below show a material produced with PCL polymer, using the same formulation and similar process parameters (voltage, flow rate, and emitter-collector distance); in the image on the left, the environmental variables—temperature and humidity—have been optimized, while in the image on the right, the environmental variables were not optimized using an environmental control unit but were processed under the laboratory’s ambient conditions at that time: as can be seen in the images, the fiber size, morphology, and structural type of both materials differ significantly, despite having used the same polymer, recipe, and process parameters (except for the environmental variables).
ESP