(180f) Experimental Investigations of the Protection Capabilities of Novel Chemical Protective Substrates

In the current times of threats and terror, highly efficient chemical protective suits and chemical decontamination wipes are necessary. Therefore, it is of extreme necessity to develop high precision analytical methods to quantify the protective capabilities of chemical protective substrates. In this study a neoteric protocol has been devised to characterize the adsorption of toxic chemicals using a Thermo-gravimetric analyzer.

Activated carbon fabrics (ACF) which are made out of activated carbon fibers are highly efficient in removing toxic chemicals from gas streams via adsorption. However, direct contact of activated carbon with skin is not recommended because of its toxic nature. Hence, structurally well integrated, three layered fabric material with the activated carbon fabric layer sandwiched between two skin friendly non-woven fabric layers was manufactured using H1 technology needle loom Fehrer®AG. Nonwoven activated carbon felt (ACN) was used as the middle adsorbent layer and the next-to-skin layers were made out of cotton fibers. A quantitative comparative study has been carried out to objectively quantify the protection characteristics of these novel protective composites.

The results indicate that the Thermo-gravimetric analyzer (Pyris 1 TGA® Perkin ElmerTM), which is conventionally used for chemical composition analysis and oxidation behavior, when used in this setting, is an efficient analytical tool for quantifying the adsorption characteristics such as the rate of adsorption, saturation time and adsorption capacity. The work reported in this paper is timely and contributes to our homeland security and national defense.