BIOMASK Project

The bioMASK project aims to leverage Madeira's abundant banana production and use the banana stem by-product to design, engineer and produce a biodegradable, washable and filterable (FFP) mask-rated FFP2 ECDC. The bioMASK will aim to achieve filtration efficiency against 0.1-micron viral particles in the air. The project will use the leftover banana stems after growing the fruit to build a conglomerate, thus taking advantage of the plant's material to be applied to a medical product. This conglomerate will include banana fibres as cellulose acetate (CA)-based nanomaterial encapsulating material. Currently, FFP masks are recommended for single use, which has caused increased medical waste generation and resulted in plastic pollution.

The project has three objectives relating to nanomaterials science, design science and production know-how:

• Objective 1: Development of material technology for the manufacture of a biodegradable nano-filter conglomerated between banana and cotton textiles for application in a filter mask (FFP) in accordance with the equivalent classification FFP2/N95.
• Objective 2: Building systemic knowledge of a human-centred design process to convert banana tissue and cellulose acetate nanomaterial-based conglomerate into a bioMASK FFP2, optimizing it for user comfort and use.
• Objective 3: Capacitation of The Biomask Company, Lda, a local medical products company, by obtaining technical knowledge of electrospinning/electrospinning, nanomaterials science and conglomerate construction for the manufacture of FFP2 masks in the Autonomous Region of Madeira and scaling this knowledge to gain visibility within the EU medical products sector.