A group of students from the DTU Nursing Faculty have developed an environmentally friendly Covid-19 face mask, made of bagasse sugarcane.
Students display the mask fabric Photo: X.D
On November 21, at the 2020 Danang Startup & Innovation Festival, participants remarked on a unique face mask at the DTU Student Innovation & Startup booth. The idea was conceived by five students: Nguyen Hong Dung, Vo Thi Han Chau, Nguyen Le Nhat Mai and Nguyen Thi Thanh Nga, all second-year Nursing students, and Phan Van Thinh, a fourth-year Business Administration student, under the guidance of Dr. Le Hoang Sinh, Director of the DTU Center of Advanced Chemistry.
“When we first proposed our idea at the 2020 DTU Startup Day contest in September, our lecturers encouraged us to proceed,” said the team leader, Nguyen Hong Dung. “We wanted to create environmentally friendly and safe face masks to increase public awareness and promote Covid-19 prevention.”
Vo Thi Han Chau stated that, normally, discarded face masks tend to increase pollution of the streets, so her team set to work on a new type of mask that decomposes quickly and harmlessly. Research showed that bagasse sugarcane is widely used in the production of plastic cups, food boxes, notebooks and calendars, but not yet for face masks.
“In practice, having an idea is one thing, but researching and creating a product is quite another,” added Han Chau. For second-year students like ourselves, the main obstacle was knowing how to proceed. However, we found out that nobody else was making them, so we enlisted the DTU Startup Center to connect us with Dr. Le Hoang Sinh, who already researches environmentally friendly sugarcane by-products.”
Dr. Le Hoang Sinh praised the students’ creativity and practicality. Their project was similar to his own research a year ago on eco-friendly bagasse sugarcane use. The most complex and important step was the creation of the new fabric. “We had to ensure that the masks were safe and didn’t cause skin irritation,” said Dr. Le Hoang Sinh. “After two months, we managed to create a new fabric that met these conditions, but further research will be necessary to perfect the product to meet Ministry of Health safety standards.”
The group is planning to finalize the product and submit it to the Ministry for certification and production permission early in 2021. Nguyen Huynh Linh, Deputy-Director of the DTU Startup Center, confirmed that he will then help the team promote and market their revolutionary new face mask.
(Media Center)