Location: Cotton Ginning Research
2020 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 a system to measure the fiber removed by gin cleaning machinery.
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
This is the final report for this project which was replaced by project #6066-41440-009-00D, "Cotton Ginning Research to Improve Processing Efficiency and Product Quality in the Saw-Ginning of Picker-Harvested Cotton." As this project comes to a close it has been a challenging time due to loss of manpower on the project team. However, significant progress has been made on the goals of this project over the last five years.
In the last year significant progress has been made on the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) techniques for scouting cotton fields for plastic contaminants prior to harvest. Plastic bags representing the most common colors were placed in a cotton field and routinely monitored throughout the season. Image analysis was performed on the images collected by the UAV. Image analysis revealed the blue color band and near-infrared band of the cameras to be most effective in detecting the widest array of bag colors. Work continues on this project, in collaboration with research partners, to optimize UAV and camera parameters for contamination prevention technology to be integrated with other UAV precision agriculture parameters.
A prototype air-bar lint cleaner (ABLC) was manufactured and its performance was compared to a conventional saw-type lint cleaner. The ABLC produced higher turnout (more lint per pound of seed cotton) with less foreign matter than the conventional saw lint cleaner; however, the ABLC samples also had shorter fiber length and higher short fiber content than samples from the conventional saw-type lint cleaner. Further work is needed to optimize the settings of the ABLC and to determine the net change in quality and efficiency.
Progress has been made in a number of areas over the last five years on areas such as mass flow, energy use, drying systems, high-speed roller ginning, and plastic contamination, in addition to the work conducted in the past year.
Work has been performed to better understand energy consumption during the ginning process, and ways to interpret energy consumption to improve fiber quality and move towards a reduction of energy consumption during ginning. Energy costs account for approximately 25% of the expenses of commercial gin. A large source of energy consumption is pneumatic conveyance of cotton. Work has been accomplished in partnership with collaborators to utilize modern fan speed control to reduce energy input while operating at ever increasing rates. Studies have been performed to relate fiber damage to energy consumption as well as to study the increased removal of foreign matter by conveying cotton at higher speeds. Work to assess drying systems for cotton has also shown the potential to reduce energy costs through improved drying of cotton. In addition to cost savings, proper drying of seed cotton leads to improved cotton fiber quality which improves returns for the producer and ginner.
Foreign matter, in particular plastic contaminants and bark, have been an increasing problem to the industry during this project cycle. In collaboration with other ARS research units steady progress has been made to prevent plastic from entering the supply chain through the use of UAV to locate plastic in the field, develop machine modifications to eject plastic during the ginning cycle, and better understand the impact of bark and plastic contaminants on textile processing. Trials have been conducted to study the behavior of plastic films during processing which will allow for the air flow inside of ginning machinery to be modified to aid in the separation of plastic from cotton. Although a significant amount of plastic was removed by ginning machinery, the plastic that remained was reduced in size and increased in number which hampers further removal during processing.
Work on implementing high-speed roller ginning on upland cottons grown in the humid southeast has continued with partnerships across ARS. The improvements in fiber quality and processing efficiency shown in the far-west have been replicated with cottons typical of the southeast. The quality improvements are detectable through textile processing furthering the benefit to the industry.
Accomplishments
1. Partners in data innovation – cotton. Cotton is a complex crop with many steps which can impact quality between planting of the seed and consumption at the textile mill. The efficient communication of data between all aspects of the production chain will allow researchers to better understand the roles of genetics and environment in determining fiber and textile quality. These efficiencies will be further multiplied by reducing the time researchers spend entering and manipulating data as opposed to making advances in science by analyzing data. ARS researchers in Stoneville, Mississippi, are developing a demonstration project for the collection of cotton data from “dirt to shirt”. This application and data dashboard will be implemented for the 2021 cotton crop on select field trials. Knowledge of the production history of seed cotton prior to ginning will enable gins to optimize handling and ginning to preserve fiber quality and maximize returns for producers.
Review Publications
Sui, R. 2019. Use of pressured-air for cotton lint cleaning. Journal of Agricultural Science. Vol. 12, No. 1; 2020. https://doi.org/10.5539/jas.v12n1p31.
