Rapid and sustainable fabrication of antibacterial chitosan/PVA–SiO2 nanofiber air filters by needleless electrospinning

With the growing demand for air purification, the large-scale deployment of filtration materials is of increasing importance. However, conventional nanofiber membranes derived from synthetic polymers often generate non-degradable waste upon disposal, which can lead to secondary environmental pollution. In this study, chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol were used as the primary raw materials to fabricate environmentally friendly nanofiber membranes via needleless electrospinning. Under optimized processing conditions (60 kV, 20 min), the resulting membranes exhibited excellent filtration performance, achieving a quality factor of 0.059 41 Pa−1, high filtration efficiencies of 96.94% for PM2.5 and 99.34% for PM10, and a pressure drop of only 15.7 Pa. Moreover, the membranes demonstrated complete (100%) antibacterial efficacy against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli within 16 h under our experimental conditions. This work presents a rapid, sustainable, and scalable strategy for producing high-performance air filtration membranes that combine efficient particulate removal, low air resistance, and antibacterial properties, thereby offering a promising solution to reduce secondary pollution from spent filters.