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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Structure and Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #249747
Title: Preliminary studies of cotton non-lint content identification by ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy

Author
item Fortier, Chanel
item Rodgers Iii, James
item Foulk, Jonn

Submitted to: National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/8/2010
Publication Date: 4/28/2010
Citation: Fortier, C.A., Rodgers III, J.E., Foulk, J.A. 2010. Preliminary studies of cotton non-lint content identification by ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy. Proceeding of the 2010 National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference, January 5-7, 2010, New Orleans, Louisiana. p. 1374-1377. 2010 CDROM.

Interpretive Summary: The comingling of cotton lint with cotton trash has been a formidable problem for cotton harvesters and processors because the cotton trash is hard to remove, can lead to clogging of the rotors in spinning equipment, and to an increased formation of neps. Also, during the processing of cotton, the cotton trash present can be reduced in size to form powder-size and pepper-size trash making it difficult to identify the cotton trash components such as hull, leaf, seed coat, seed meat, and stem.. It is the goal of the current study to identify the common components of botanical trash using Ultraviolet-Visible spectroscopy.

Technical Abstract: Cotton trash can become comingled with the lint during the harvesting and processing of cotton. Compounding this problem is the tendency of cotton trash to become smaller in size during the processing of cotton. Thus, the development of a method which can analyze these small trash samples based on their chemical or physical properties would be advantageous. In addition, high specificity in the determination of the type of cotton trash present would be desirable. A program was implemented to determine the capabilities of Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy to classify cotton trash components, including hull, leaf, seed coat, seed meat, and stem. Minute spectral differences between the cotton trash components were used to classify the cotton trash types. The advantages of this method include moderate cost, short analysis time, and non-destruction of samples.