Author
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Gillum, Marvis |
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ARMIJO, CARLOS - LAS CRUCES NM |
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Submitted to: National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference
Publication Type: Proceedings Publication Acceptance Date: 1/10/1996 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Currently, pima cotton is lint cleaned using a bulk system where a single line of spiked cylinder, impact and air-jet cleaners receive lint from several roller gin stands. Although the bulk system is economically more efficient, the individual cleaners have a poor machine efficiency. Also, large amounts of air are needed to transport the fiber from the gin stand to the cleaners. Although it is possible to use a single, more-efficient machine in bulk fashion to lint clean pima cotton (such as a saw-type lint cleaner), the fiber is damaged because a feed-works assembly is needed to set the fiber on the saw. The experimental roller gin/lint cleaner combines the standard roller gin stand with a saw=type lint cleaner into one unit, thereby eliminating the need for a feed-works assembly. Even though the experimental machine requires a lint cleaner for each roller gin stand ( a non-bulk system), the machine uses only a small fraction of the transport air as before. Therefore, less equipment is needed to handle an dispose of the air. Preliminary results show that fiber from the experimental machine is the same or better than fiber from bulk lint cleaning. The cotton producer will benefit by having both a superior product to sell and by having lower ginning costs Technical Abstract: An experimental roller gin/lint cleaner was built and tested. The experimental machine combines the ginning and lint cleaning functions into one unit, with lint cleaning being done using a cylinder-type lint cleaner. Because the roller-ginned lint tufts fall directly onto the cleaning cylinder, a feed works assembly is not needed. The feed works associated with cleaning cylinders is what usually causes fiber damage. The experimental treatment consisted of the roller gin/lint cleaner using a standard spiral-wrapped saw cylinder for lint cleaning, while the control treatment bypassed the cleaning cylinder for lint cleaning and instead used two mill-type/air-jet cleaners. Test results show that lint from the experimental treatment contained more trash than lint cleaned by the mill- type cleaners, but the extra trash was not enough to affect grade. There is more lint loss in the trash of the experimental machine, but turnout remained higher. Also, nep content was lower in the experimental machine. Future tests will include different types of cleaning cylinders. Both the spinning potential and industry acceptance of roller ginned fiber which has been cleaned by nontraditional means is not known at this time. |
