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Zentgraf F, Johe P, Hoche H, Göckel B, Becker S, Oechsner M, Dreizler A. Assessment of the impact of multiple mild-steam decontaminations on the protection performance of disposable KN95 filtering facepiece respirators. Infect Prev Pract 2021; 3:100136. [PMID: 34368748 PMCID: PMC8336038 DOI: 10.1016/j.infpip.2021.100136] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous supply bottlenecks of single-use filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) leading to a growing need for a potential reuse. This study assesses the impact of multiple mild-steam decontaminations with 121 °C/2000 mbar/20 min on the protection performance of disposable FFRs. It focuses on FFRs of type KN95 that is recently dominating the markets, but its decontamination is not covered in the literature. It was found that up to ten cycles, only minor degradation in the filter efficiency, breathing resistance and none in the material structure is apparent, suggesting a potential for multiple decontamination cycles at almost unchanged protective properties of KN95 FFRs.
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Affiliation(s)
- F Zentgraf
- Technical University of Darmstadt, Mechanical Engineering, Reactive Flows and Diagnostics, Otto-Berndt-Straße 3, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany
| | - P Johe
- Technical University of Darmstadt, Mechanical Engineering, Reactive Flows and Diagnostics, Otto-Berndt-Straße 3, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany
| | - H Hoche
- Technical University of Darmstadt, Mechanical Engineering, Center for Structural Materials, Grafenstraße 2, 64283, Darmstadt, Germany
| | - B Göckel
- Alice-SterilGutVersorgung, Alice-Hospital, Dieburger Straße 31, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany
| | - S Becker
- Division of Pediatric Pulmonology, Children's Hospital, Dieburger Straße 31, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany
| | - M Oechsner
- Technical University of Darmstadt, Mechanical Engineering, Center for Structural Materials, Grafenstraße 2, 64283, Darmstadt, Germany
| | - A Dreizler
- Technical University of Darmstadt, Mechanical Engineering, Reactive Flows and Diagnostics, Otto-Berndt-Straße 3, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany
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