Location: Cotton Ginning Research
Title: Belt feeding a 10-saw gin standAuthor
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Submitted to: ASABE Annual International Meeting
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 3/25/2024 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Commercial scale cotton saw ginning operations typically use mechanical feeder systems such as an extractor feeder in order to meter cotton into the gin stand. However, 10-saw breeder gin stands often require manual feeding of the seed cotton into the system. With manual feeding, the operator controls the consistency of the feed rate. This manual control makes it impossible to guarantee consistent feeding across time and equipment. This study evaluates the performance of using a conveyor belt system to feed the seed cotton into a 10-saw gin stand equipped with 10-inch saws and a 3-phase 220v motor. To achieve this, the gin stand was instrumented to monitor and record power and energy consumption over time. The study includes cotton samples ranging from 200 to 400 grams across 3 different operators. The data provided by the instrumentation over time was post-processed into energy and ginning time per run. Over the course of 90 runs, initial results show that sample size is a significant factor for ginning time, while evidence failed to show that operator significantly affected energy or ginning time. During the course of testing, the belt feeder system was successful at feeding the cotton without large variation. |
