Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 30, 2025
Microbubble Fabrication of Concave-porosity PDMS Beads
Published on: December 15, 2015
Use of Silica Beads to Dry N95 Respirators During Storage
Christopher J Woolverton1, Craig Peeps2, Joan Seidel3
1College of Public Health, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA.
Introduction:
The 2019 novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has caused an unprecedented use of personal protective equipment (PPE), especially the disposable filtering facepiece respirator (FFR), N95. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided crisis capacity strategies for FFR decontamination and reuse, including the drying of N95s in paper bags for 5 days to remove the moisture that could maintain virus viability.
Methods:
We tested the ability of food-grade silica bead packets to accelerate moisture removal from N95s during 24-hour time periods.
Results:
Briefly, N95s sprayed with water were completely dehydrated by silica beads within 24 hours, as measured with a commercial moisture meter. Importantly, repeated wetting and drying (with silica) did not decrease the N95 ability to exclude the bitter taste of Bitrex during standard fit testing.
Conclusions:
We conclude that food-grade silica beads can desiccate wet N95s over 24 hours, removing moisture.
More Related Videos
08:00Author Spotlight: Standardizing the Development of Amine-Based Silica Composites as CO2 Adsorbents for Direct Air Capture
Published on: September 29, 2023
11:06Encapsulating Cytochrome c in Silica Aerogel Nanoarchitectures without Metal Nanoparticles while Retaining Gas-phase Bioactivity
Published on: March 1, 2016
