SOMMER ENGINEERING – Sourcing of Respirator Masks raw materials

Since the outbreak of Covit-19 SOMMER ENGINEERING uses its know-how, expierience and laboratory network in Germany and China to support European companies in sourcing and testing facemasks as well as raw materials such as melt-blown, spunbonded non-wovens for outer and inner layer, ear loops and nose strips.

So far, we tested dozens of different melt-blown fibers in different configurations from suppliers all over China. We learned that many melt-blown cloths in the market are not suitable to fulfill the high requirements of a filter material in a FFP2 mask according DIN EN 149. Many fibers come from new suppliers without proper experience, machineries and quality control measurements. The meltblown quality is often unstable and many cloths do not pass the filter efficiency or the permeability or even both. Even when some materials show sufficient filter efficiency with NaCl test aerosol, many do not pass the test with paraffin oil because of electrostatic discharge problems.

Respiratory masks devices belonging to personal protection equipment. Poor quality masks can harm its user seriously. Every importer and manufacturer of personal equipment must ensure that its materials are qualified and comply with its local Norms.

Important News: We are happy to announce that we together with an partner company in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany using our experience and know-how to start a production of high quality FFP2 Respiratory Protection Masks according DIN EN 149. Production start will be in the middle of July 2020!

To select suitable filter materials, we developed a multiple step sourcing process:

Firstly, for pre-selection we conduct a series of inhouse tests:

  • filter efficiency test with NaCl
  • air permeability tests
  • ultrasonic welding test

Only when above tests shown promising results, we send the sample to a professional lab to conduct filter efficiency tests with paraffin oil.
When this test showed positive result too and all layers are chosen, we able to do a mask test simulation with the chosen layers for penetration of filter material (7.9.2) and breathing resistance (7.16) according DIN EN 149.

For any questions please feel free to contact us.