Location: Cotton Ginning Research
2019 Annual Report
Objectives
1. Enable, from a technological standpoint, new commercial methods and processes to reduce energy use, labor costs, and environmental impact, while preserving cotton fiber and seed quality, during the saw-ginning of picker-harvested cotton.
1.A. Develop a fan speed control system for conveying fans used at gins to reduce energy inputs.
1.B. Develop improved systems for drying seed cotton to optimum moisture levels with reduced energy inputs.
1.C. Determine effect of higher than recommended processing rates on fiber quality and losses.
1.D. Develop Seed-Cotton Separator for Optimizing Fiber Quality.
1.E. Improve and evaluate air-bar lint cleaner.
2. Enable new commercial methods and machinery to improve product quality in the saw-ginning of picker-harvested cotton.
2.A. Develop machinery and processes to remove plastic contamination at the gin.
2.B. Determine causes of increased bark content of picker-harvested saw- ginned cotton.
2.C. Improve foreign matter removal by seed cotton cleaners, thus reducing the need for lint cleaning and associated fiber damage.
2.D. Apply high-speed roller ginning equipment for use with picked cotton in the humid region of the United States.
2.E. Develop intelligent system to identify and remove plastic particles in cotton fields and in gins.
3. Identify material properties that have a significant impact on fiber and seed quality during saw-ginning, and enable new or improved, commercial methods for measuring product moisture content and process mass flow rates during ginning.
3.A. Develop a mass flow rate sensor for seed cotton.
3.B. Improve seed cotton moisture content measurement during the ginning process.
3.C. Identify cotton properties or measurable process parameters indicative of fiber damage occurring in the gin stand.
3.D. Develop methods to enable the use of commercial cotton gin trash and seeds for bio-products and bio-energy.
Approach
A unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will be purchased. An imaging system will be coupled with UAV to take aerial images of cotton fields. Methods and algorithms to identify the plastic particles using the aerial images will be developed and evaluated. Development of an intelligent device which consists of UAV, imaging system, robotics will be explored to identify the plastic particles and remove the particle at the same time in situ. Sensor and control systems will be developed to detect and remove plastic objects during the ginning process.
Seed-cotton separator will be designed and fabricated to separate the seed-cotton
based on cotton quality. Using the seed-cotton separator, seed-cotton will be
separated into two portions. One portion is high quality seed-cotton (HQSC) while the other is low quality seed-cotton (LQSC). Samples of HQSC and LQSC will be collected and ginned for analysis of fiber properties, including micronare, fiber length, and short fiber content. Fiber properties of HQSC will be compared to that of LQSC to find the effectiveness of the seed-cotton separator. The density of the HQSC and LQSC will be measured. The “throw-away” distance from a saw wheel in the separator will be measured. The saw wheel performance parameters will be optimized to achieve the desired separation based on cotton quality.
More air-bars will be built so that multiple bars are able to be used in one lint
cleaner. Improved air-bars will be installed on lint cleaner and tested with
different air pressures supplied to the air-bar. Fiber properties of the lint from the air-bar lint cleaner will be compared to that from the traditional lint cleaner. Design of the air-bar lint cleaner for commercial products will be explored.
Power measurements of individual gin stand components and fiber properties determined from HVI or AFI will be used to predict short fiber and nep content occurring due to different processing conditions, such as moisture and ginning rate. Samples will be ginned and electricity use will be monitored. Predictive models for fiber quality parameters, particularly short fiber and nep content, will be developed for each genotype based on energy data and moisture content.
Measurement of fiber loss during cleaning is an important part of understanding the ginning process and control of that fiber loss may be related to other factors being studied. The proposed measurement system for the quantity of fiber lost from cleaning machinery includes a measurement of the proportion of material with cotton fiber color and a measurement of the total cleaner waste mass flow rate.
Progress Report
The prototype device for quality-based seed-cotton separation which was built in FY18 was modified according to the previous testing results. The shape of the flow-pipe was changed from round to rectangular to make the seed cotton more evenly distributed as it passes through the pipe and enters the tunnel. Instead of blowing the cotton inside a pathway, a tunnel was constructed inside a building. The tunnel was 48’L x 12’H x 8’W. Using this updated device, tests were conducted. Seed-cotton with plastic films, including cotton round-module wrapper in various sizes and thicknesses, was fed into a pressured-air flow and blown out of a pipe. The seed-cotton and plastic films, which were blown out from the pipe, drifted down in the tunnel which was divided into 6 sections. Samples of cotton and plastic films in each section of the tunnel were collected and analyzed for fiber quality and behavior of the plastic films. The results indicate quality difference between the cotton collected from different sections. However, no obvious trend was observed in the plastic behavior in different sections of the tunnel.
A DJI Matrice 600 Pro UAV has been equipped with a multiband RedEdge camera for aerial imagery of cotton field for detecting plastic contamination in the field. An iPad mini-4 equipped with an Atlas Flight application was connected to the UAV controller to setup flight parameters before each flight. Atlas Flight software controls the flight height, imagery capture boundaries and automatically takes off and lands the UAV. Flights have been completed at 60m, 50m, and 30m heights to determine optimal resolution and battery life conditions. The height of 50m was found to be the optimal by allowing for one set of batteries to fly over the entire testing area, leaving about 30% battery life for the return home and landing procedure. Also, the 50m flight height produces a 3.47 cm GSD per band. Once the set flight height is reached, the RedEdge camera begins taking images and stores them on a micro USB flash drive. Different color plastic bags, including white, yellow, tan, black, blue, were placed in between rows of a cotton field and randomized between right, left and center of the row and based on color in each of the 10 test plots, each plot having 3 bags for a total of 30 bags and 6 of each color. Images were taken for processing using Pix4D field software. Pix4D fields allows for different reflectance response, between vegetation, soil and plastic. One drawback found to using the Pix4D fields, was the last of customization and control over eliminating different reflective responses. So, another software, Pix4D mapper, was purchased to allow the images to be manipulated by reflectance band, set reflectance responses, and eliminating large quantities of responses which were not very useful, such as soil and large quantities of vegetation. Once images with each wavelength band were created, total responses within the images will be restricted to generate color-coded responses to only plastic and other non-plastics with a similar reflectance. Progress has been steadily increasing with detection of different plastics within different band reflectance responses. Multiple colors can typically be found in the Blue band and the NIR band. More testing and image processing will continue to take place to be able to construct a formula that can be entered into the Pix4D software to aid in detection with more accuracy.
Accomplishments
1. Air-bar lint cleaner. Saw-type lint cleaners are now the most common lint cleaners used at gins because of their higher cleaning efficiency. Saw-type lint cleaning improves the grade of the fiber and increases the market value. However, during the cleaning process the saw-type lint cleaners damaged fiber in creating short fibers and neps. ARS scientists at Stoneville, Mississippi, developed an air-bar device and implemented it in a lint cleaner and tested it by comparing it to the conventional grid-bar lint cleaner. Samples of cotton lint processed with air-bar and conventional grid-bar were collected. HVI and AFIS properties of the samples including fiber length, strength, short fiber content, and trash content were tested. Results indicate that use of air-bar could significantly reduce the fiber content in motes and increase the ginning turnout.
