Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials – Faculty of Engineering
Ravi Selvaganapathy works in a lab.

Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials

Global leaders in creating the next generation of personal protective equipment. This collection of infrastructure and projects will be unique not only in Canada, but also in the rest of world.

Global leaders in PPE

The Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials assists research and development needs for Canadian companies, both existing and new, so that they can meet today’s needs for PPE Canada.

The centre also develops the next generation of personal protective equipment to become global leaders in the future.

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Our story

The CEPEM was established in response to a call from Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) to start local manufacturing of face masks and face shields due to the anticipated supply chain breakdown in March of 2020 caused by COVID-19.

In just over a month, the CEPEM team provided design, identified suitable materials and developed validation tests so that local manufacturers are now producing 20,000 face shields/day (Whitebird) and 20,000 masks/day (Niko apparel) to supply HHS.

In this process, the centre has also developed a testing facility that can assess various filtration materials for breathability (pressure drop), particulate filtration efficiency (PFE), bacterial filtration efficiency (BFE) and fit testing.

Company partners

A person wearing a mask and a McMaster University lab coat.

Meeting urgent COVID-19 demand

Due to shut down of access to test facilities in the United States for Canadian companies, we have served as a much needed resource for Canadian companies in validating their materials for use in face mask.

We worked closely with Woodbridge providing them guidance on certification process and testing their material combinations to identify the best one for Level 3 surgical masks.

 

Read more about how our centre helped expedite production
Sneha Shanbhag gives a tour of the CEPEM facility.

Thematic areas

The activities of the centre are focused on the following thematic areas:

Existing PPEs such as face masks and face shields were not specifically designed for medical use and have dated designs that don’t incorporate the latest advances in materials and manufacturing technologies. We will design and develop the next-generation PPE that is customizable to the individual’s facial features, uses the latest functional materials, and incorporates the needs and requirements of medical professionals. We will also develop reusable PPEs that are capable of being sterilized and reused making them green and reusable.

We will work with Canadian manufacturers of PPEs in the automation of operations for PPE manufacturing. In addition, we will also develop new manufacturing processes for meltblown, meltspun, and electrospun materials to produce functional hybrid composites that will enable high-performance PPEs. Small-scale prototyping equipment for melt blowing, meltspinning, and electrospinning will form a core facility within the center.

The properties and performance of the PPEs are ultimately dependent on the materials used. Existing PPEs use commodity polymers such as polypropylene and polyethylene. We will assist new Canadian manufacturers of non-wovens to identify suitable polymer blends and additives that can provide additional functional properties such as antimicrobial, antiviral, self cleaning, air purifying, pathogen and chemical sensing, active water and blood repelling, humidity and thermal control.

A core facility within the center will be a well-validated and robust testing facility that will be capable of performing assessments on barrier properties (airflow resistance, particulate and bacterial filtration efficiency, quantitative fit testing, aerosol distribution visualization), mechanical integrity (tensile, bulge, adhesion, pull, flexural and fatigue) and materials properties (microscopic structure, pore size, fiber uniformity, composition, leaching, degradation). This facility will serve as a resource not only for academic research but also for the local industry.

Current standards for PPEs such as facemasks or face shields are not intended or specifically designed with their medical use in mind. We will work with national agencies to define Canadian and international standards for the testing of PPEs. In particular, we will focus on medical use and collaborate with medical colleagues to formulate standards that would assess the performance of PPEs under medically relevant conditions.

PPEs currently used are mostly disposable due to the fear of contamination between uses. However, being manufactured from polymers obtained from fossil fuels and incinerated after a single use, they contribute to greenhouse gases and eventually climate change. We will develop PPEs using natural polymers such as cellulose and with biodegradable properties that can avoid use of fossil fuels in their manufacture and limit their contribution to climate change.

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