In these times of COVID-19 pandemic and widespread shortages of - - PDF document

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COVID-19


PROPOSED SOLUTION TO TACKLE RAPIDLY THE MASK SHORTAGE AROUND THE WORLD AND STOP THE EPIDEMIC IN ITS TRACK EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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In these times of COVID-19 pandemic and widespread shortages of essential medical protection equipment, Cellulotech’s proposes a solution (patent pending) allowing for the fast, non-expensive ($0.05/unit) and massive production of protective face-masks through a repurposing of the paper industry.

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Chromategony, a chemical reaction discovered by our chief scientist, Dr. Daniel Samain, makes paper permanently hydrophobic. Masks made out

• f chromatogeny treated paper can thus stop droplets containing viruses

and offer great filtering properties while simultaneously allowing for greater

• breathability. Prototypes are currently being tested by certified

laboratories.

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Cellulotech is a R&D only company. We are looking for partners to bring this solution to market. As of the 10th of April our material has been approved in France as a type 1 mask (use by professionals in contact with the public) and achieved a 98% filtration efficiency.

COVID19@CELLULOTECH.COM

POTENTIAL PRODUCTION CAPACITY ESTIMATED UNIT COST ESTIMATED TIME TO PRODUCTION

BILLIONS / DAY $0.05 Days to few weeks

BACKGROUND A greater availability of protective masks would very likely help slow down and limit the spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, current inventories and production capacity, even with all the efforts being put in place, are not sufficient to deal with the current crisis. Even front-line medical professionals are confronting worrying shortages. Not only then should we protect lives but we should allow people to resume work under safe conditions as the world is facing a potential economic crisis. Masks obviously need to display the most efficient COVID-19 barrier properties, but in an ideal world, they should also be comfortable to wear, easy to produce, affordable and manufactured from non-limited, recyclable, starting materials available everywhere. This is not the case today where masks are far too complex and costly for the need of the general

• population. The main fabric used, melt blown

polypropylene, is very difficult to make and is currently in

• shortage. This overengineering is the reason why the

mask industry cannot cope with the current epidemic. In fact, given today’s mask technologies and manufacturing capabilities, providing the world’s population with unlimited amounts of breathing masks is currently a pipe dream. Yet, given the spread and strength of COVID-19, this has to remain a policy goal. And in order to achieve this policy goal, we need a change of paradigm. A CHANGE OF PARADIGM Virus particles have neither wings nor legs. They are devoid of any metabolism and have to rely on “public transportation” to get from one host to another. For 2

«The chronic, global shortage of personal protective equipment is one of the most urgent threats to our collective ability to save lives.»

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization

Example of simple protective mask from face tissue (attached with rubber Another example, offering better fitting and breathability

COVID19@CELLULOTECH.COM

enveloped virus particles, these public transportation systems are the aqueous droplets that humans execrate when talking, sneezing, or coughing. Masks work by stopping aqueous droplets containing the virus

• particles. Masks work by preventing infected people

from spreading the disease, and symmetrically protecting healthy people from being contaminated. Paper products have long been considering for mask making as they are widely available, low priced and environment friendly and known for their filtering

• properties. Their use in medical mask confection has

however been hampered by their hydrophilicity. An aqueous droplet loaded with virus particles deposited on

• ne side of a conventional hydrophilic paper sheet is submitted to strong capillary

forces, which then carry the virus particles to the other side of the sheet. Cellulotech’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Daniel Samain, has been working for more than 20 years to solve this issue. He made a breakthrough discovery and developed a competitive new process coined Chromatogeny, which allows hydrophilic cellulose- based materials (such as paper) to be rendered permanently strongly hydrophobic (i.e.: water-proof) though their chemical reaction with long chain fatty acid chlorides. Furthermore, Dr. Daniel Samain has recently shown that application of this technology to multiple plies very thin paper products (such as facial tissues) resulted in unexpected impressive water proofing, while preserving the initial exceptional breathability of these products. We thus believe that the answer to the global mask issue lies in the hydrophobation of already massively produced facial tissues through the use of chromatogeny. Virus loaded aqueous droplets would then be efficiently prevented from getting in or out, providing wholesome anti- viral protection. Most importantly, the process doesn’t affect the breathability of the tissue giving rise to

• utstanding breathing comfort.

The production capacity of paper and facial tissues is more than large enough to cover global needs. Around 25 billion face tissues are produced in the world every single day. Stearic acid chloride, one chemical reagent used in the chromatogeny reaction, is currently commercially available in thousand of tons amounts. A chromatogeny treatment of 7 billion face tissues, to in essence turn “Kleenexes 3

Water droplet sliding on a face tissue treated by chromatogeny

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100ml of water inside a 1g face tissue after 10 days. No leakage.

COVID19@CELLULOTECH.COM

into face-masks” would require only 28 tons of this reagent. We are convinced that with the support of the governments and the paper and printing industry, retrofitting paper printing lines in order to be able to use chromatogeny would take just a few days to a few weeks. Industrial feasibility of the chromatogeny process has already been demonstrated both in France and in South Korea where facilities could be tapped to start production very early on. ADVANTAGES OF THE SOLUTION a) SCALE AND TIME TO PRODUCTION The main advantage of this solution is that it is a simple « add-on » to something already produced massively every single day: facial tissues. Regarding the attach system, one rudimentary solution but yet effective and easy to scale up is to use simple elastic bands and staples (see pictures below), but other solutions are available. In order to save time, people could be delivered the treated face tissues in boxes of hundreds as well as rubber bands and staples. They’d be able to make their own masks without any problem and such box could last weeks if not months. We have however developed a mask design especially suited to facial tissues, and yet could be assembled easily by individuals in a short time. These masks are:

• much more sturdy,
• much more protective because of their very good morphological fit
• quite comfortable to wear during prolonged periods because of their outstanding

breathability which is partly conferred by the mask design and shape. b) ESTIMATED COST We have used wholesale costs in our estimation rather than production cost to take into account the industry’s margin as well as transportation costs. Wholesale cost of one face tissue (3-ply)

$ 0.02

Wholesale cost of two rubber band

$0.03

Wholesale cost of two staples

$0.002

Wholesale cost steraic acid (per face tissue)

$0.0016

TOTAL UNIT COST

$ 0.0536

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Note: while Cellulotech has a pending patent for this application, the use of rotogravure for chromatogeny which was patented by Dr. Daniel Samain is currently owned by the CTP and the CNRS in France. Some licensing fees will likely have to be added on the top of this but it will not change the economic picture. Rotogravure is the fastest way to go into production at this moment. c) GLOBAL AVAILABILITY In terms of supply chain this solution has the advantage of being able to piggy-back on the supply chains of paper product distributors already available across different countries. d) ENVIRONMENT The use of paper is definitely more environment friendly than thermoplastic polymers like polypropylene currently used for surgical masks. Chromatogeny treated paper keeps all the properties of traditional paper as it remains biodegradable, compostable and recyclable. Recycled paper can also be used. The main advantage in the use of paper for this medical application is its ability to be destroyed by incineration as it is mandatory for any material which may be contaminated by infectious microorganisms. e) SAFETY The hydroxyls groups present in the paper structure are converted after the chromatogeny reaction in long chain fatty acid esters, exactly the same functional groups found in the structure of oils and fats. f) FLEXIBILITY One of the main advantage of using paper is that we can adjust the paper weight and the number of layers (and their hydrophobia) to meet different requirements in terms of breathability and filtration. We are currently testing various parameters. A simple commercial 4-ply treated by Chromatogeny achieved high breathability while filtering more than 98% of 3-micron particles. HOW CHROMATOGENY WORKS Chromatogeny, discovered 20 years ago by our chief scientist Dr. Daniel Samain, is a chemical reaction that provides any cellulose-based material a permanent hydrophobic character as it is grafted with a covalent bond. 5 COVID19@CELLULOTECH.COM

The process is simple: deposit a reagent and then heat it up. To remove any excess a stream of hot air is used. The most affordable and available reagents are Palmitic acid chloride (C16H31ClO) or Stearic acid chloride (C18H35ClO). We tend to favor stearic acid chloride (the larger the carbon chain the better). 0.2g/m2 of reagent only is necessary, thus the very low cost. The neat reagents are deposited on the surface of the dry paper sheets by conventional printing technologies such as rotogravure. The paper sheets are then heated up in presence of controlled air flow. This displaces the liquid/gas equilibrium of the reagents, allows their homogeneous diffusion and speeds up tremendously their reaction with the free hydroxyls of cellulose fibers. Acylation of these hydroxyls by long chain fatty acid gives rise to permanent strong hydrophobic properties. HCl, a valuable by-product of the reaction is constantly removed from the material by a stream of hot air and recovered in a water tank. Quite interestingly, the structure of the paper remains unchanged, keeping its porous character (and thus allowing breathability and filtration). Highly breathable fine paper sheets such as those found in facial tissues are prone to exhibit at least a few defects known as pin holes. Using a single strongly hydrophobic layer would therefore not guarantee satisfactory waterproofing properties. We have found that using multiple hydrophobic plies solves this problem because the probability

• f the defects to be exactly on top of each other’s is extremely small. The chance of a

droplet crossing a hydrophobic 2-ply face tissue with one pin hole per sheet would be 1 out of 22.6 million and for a hydrophobic 3-ply 1 out of 5x1014. 6 Before reaction After reaction COVID19@CELLULOTECH.COM

WHAT OUR SOLUTION WILL DO We are confident that our solution could be massively implemented at the world level. The low cost availability and high performance of our masks will be able to stop the contamination chain by preventing symptomatic and asymptomatic infected people to spread the disease and to provide a protection to non-infected people. WHAT OUR SOLUTION WILL NOT OR MAY NOT DO We do not anticipate to replace N95 masks in terms of fitting and comfort, especially for medical professionals that need comfortable and better fitting solutions because of their constant exposure.

• 5. WHAT THE PAPER/PRINTING INDUSTRY NEEDS TO DO

A production line already equipped with rotogravure would simply need to do the following: 1) Make the rotogravure inert 2) Install a heating roll after the rotogravure and a flushing system (air flush in opposite direction) 3) Install an extractor hood to catch the HCl from the reaction and neutralize it. Here is a quick representation of the process: 7 COVID19@CELLULOTECH.COM

• 6. NEXT STEPS

a) Test our prototypes in all the different countries (undergoing, but delay is 3-4 weeks, could be reduced with the support of public officials) b) Get government, WHO and the paper industry involved CONTACT INFORMATION For press inquiries: romain@cellulotech.com For governments, health organizations and paper industry willing to get involved with this project: covid19@cellulotech.com 8

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ABOUT CELLULOTECH Cellulose is the most abundant organic compound on earth. Completely renewable, we believe it has a tremendous untapped potential for our economic future and our environment. Cellulotech is a company focused on R&D around cellulose that owns a patent

• portfolio. Our main focus is on chromatogeny, a process discovered by our Chief

Scientist, Dr. Daniel Samain. Chromatogeny makes any cellulose-based material permanently hydrophobic while letting vapor go through. This opens a world of new possibilities to several industries such packaging, healthcare, fashion or construction. email: covid19@cellulotech.com