Author
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Byler, Richard |
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Delhom, Chris |
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Submitted to: Applied Engineering in Agriculture
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 2/1/2012 Publication Date: 8/20/2012 Citation: Byler, R.K., Delhom, C.D. 2012. Comparison of saw ginning and high-speed roller ginning with different lint cleaners of mid-south grown cotton. Applied Engineering in Agriculture. 28(4): 475-482. Interpretive Summary: Cotton fiber has traditionally been separated from the seed and subsequently cleaned by a saw-type gin stand and a saw-type lint cleaner. Recently a much older design of gin stand, the roller gin, has been redesigned resulting in a high-speed roller gin stand. This gin stand has been shown to produce cotton lint with overall longer fiber and fewer fiber entanglements, called neps, in the dryer portions of the US, California and Arizona primarily. The roller gin stand also uses a different design lint cleaner to maintain the improved fiber properties. A high-speed roller gin stand was installed in the more humid mid-south and used with cotton cultivars appropriate to the mid-south but not normally grown in the Western US. Three non-traditional lint cleaners were used with the high-speed roller gin. Similar lots of cotton of four cultivars were used with a saw-type gin stand line and a high-speed roller gin stand line. Lint samples were taken during processing and evaluated for fiber length, neps, and other fiber properties. The saw-type gin stand was shown to produce lower quality lint than the high-speed roller gin stand. The saw-type lint cleaner was shown to further reduce the fiber length quality. The non-traditional lint cleaners used with the high-speed roller gin stand did not damage the fiber length significantly. The lint produced by the mill-type lint cleaner contained significantly fewer neps than that produced by any of the other cleaners and removed significantly less weight of material, although it also removed less non-lint. This ginning system can produce fiber of higher quality which will increase the world-wide competitiveness of US cotton grown in the Eastern half of the country. Technical Abstract: Four cotton cultivars were ginned with a saw-gin equipment line and also with a high-speed roller-gin line. The saw-gin line using an air-jet and controlled-batt saw-type lint cleaner was compared to the high-speed roller-gin line using two versions of an experimental lint cleaner, of a basic design not used with commercial roller ginning, one design with a lint reclaimer and the other without the lint reclaimer or a mill-type lint cleaner. The high-speed roller-gin processed the seed cotton at the same rate as the saw-type gin stand per m of machine width; however, the roller-gin stand is narrower than the saw gin stand. The roller-gin line produced lint with better fiber length properties than the saw gin line. The roller-gin stand did less damage to the fiber than the saw-gin stand and each of the three lint cleaners following the roller gin stand did less damage to the lint than the controlled-batt saw-type lint cleaner. Fewer neps were created in the roller-gin line than the saw-gin line. The experimental lint cleaner did not remove as much non-lint material as the traditional controlled-batt lint cleaner, about ¾ as much, but cleaned well and the measurements of the negative effects of the lint cleaner were not statistically significant for the experimental cleaner but were significant for the traditional cleaner. The mill-type cleaner removed even less material but added still fewer neps and any possible fiber damage was not statistically significant. The fiber processed with the lint cleaner with the reclaimer had somewhat lower quality than the fiber processed with the same lint cleaner without the reclaimer. Also, the lint cleaner with the reclaimer removed nearly as much material as without the reclaimer. Therefore, the reclaimer will not be included in further testing. |
