Location: Cotton Ginning Research
2024 Annual Report
Objectives
1. Develop methods and devices to enable the reduction of plastic contaminants in commercially harvested cotton.
1.1. Develop a UAV-based intelligent system to identify and remove plastic particles in cotton field.
1.2. Develop a sensor and control system to remove plastic contamination in ginning process.
2. Develop and evaluate tools and methods to enable the commercial preservation of cotton fiber quality and increase ginning efficiency.
2.1. Develop and evaluate sensors for cotton moisture measurement in real time in situ.
2.2. Detect moisture in cotton module using UAV-based platform.
2.3. Develop and evaluate air-bar lint cleaner to increase the turnout and preserve fiber quality.
2.4. Develop a sensing and control system to automatically adjust ginning process for optimal ginning efficiency.
3. Develop methods to enable the use of commercial cotton gin trash and seeds for bio-products and bio-energy.
3.1. Develop new methods to process gin trash for bio-products and energy.
3.2. Investigate moisture dynamics in cotton seeds.
Approach
The Cotton Ginning Research Unit seeks to develop cotton ginning technologies to maximize fiber quality, increase ginning efficiency, and minimize the environmental impact of ginning. Plastic contaminants in U.S. cotton are rapidly increasing in recent years and have become a serious threat to U.S. cotton industry by reducing marketable quality.
New sensing and control systems and ginning machinery are needed to clean the contaminants, improve fiber quality and ginning efficiency, and increase cotton producers’ profitability. Researchers will develop and evaluate sensing and control systems to remove plastic contaminants from cotton and develop new tools for accurate cotton moisture measurements. UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) remote sensing will be used as a platform to find and remove the plastics from cotton fields and to detect moisture in cotton modules.
Optical sensors, data processing, automatic controls and the like will be designed and built to detect and remove the plastic materials during gin processing. Moisture sensors, coupled with improved measurement of mass-flow rate and new models, will be developed and tested to accurately determine moisture of seed cotton, cotton lint, and cotton seeds in real time. Using the data gathered, an improved control system will be designed and fabricated to optimize ginning efficiency.
Additional research includes developing and evaluating new lint cleaning technology to better preserve fiber quality and increase the ginning turnout. Studies on new methods to use gin trash for bio-energy will also be conducted in this project.
Progress Report
Significant progress has been made to address contaminants, such as plastic, in bales of cotton (Objective 1). Contaminants continue to be of concern because of quality issues during textile processing. There are several ways plastic gets into the cotton stream. One way is through litter and trash in the field at the time of harvest. A system using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is being developed to identify plastic in the field before harvesting. The UAV has a camera capable of video and still images with a Global Positioning System (GPS) that locates the images. ARS researchers in Stoneville Mississippi used the UAV to capture field images covering three growing seasons including 2023. These images have formed a dataset of roughly 18,500 annotated “trash” objects in cotton fields. The number of known objects is increasing as image data is checked by human workers. Data over the three years will allow training and testing models to see how well they work on future images. Training has started on several Artificial Intelligence (AI) based models. Initial modeling using a small part of the data shows promise. A similar study using a camera to identify sources of bark contamination is ongoing in a collaboration with the University of Georgia. That study uses location data from cotton fields along with production and harvest. The goals are to develop best practices for improving cotton fiber quality.
Additionally, a collaboration with Mississippi State University has made advances on a system for removing plastic from seed cotton. The detection system goes just after the module feeder which breaks apart incoming seed cotton modules. In this location the cotton is moving slower than most places in a cotton gin. The lower speed makes it easier to take clear images and to extract the plastic. This location also allows interacting with the plastic before it gets torn into smaller pieces during processing. The proof-of-concept system distributes the cotton to help ensure any plastic buried by cotton will be visible in the images. An Artifical Intelligence (AI) based object detection method reviews the images for the presence of plastic. The system will then eject the plastic along with a small amount of seed cotton once it is detected. Laboratory testing has started, and work continues to refine the detection models and fine tune the hardware.
The efficient production of cotton bales while maintaining or improving quality is critical to the ginning industry (Objective 2). Seed cotton that takes less energy to gin would lower the cost of producing cotton bales. Lower costs help the United States industry remain competitive. Developing lower ginning energy cotton requires a low-cost and simple method of capturing and understanding energy data. ARS researchers in Stoneville, Mississippi, made an energy data logger to prove the concept, but a lower cost version is possible using parts that are now available. A second version of the logger is being designed with newer chips and printed circuits. This new version lowers costs while simplifying the build. Work is also ongoing to automatically count cotton seeds from a breeder gin, which will make it easier to calculate metrics such as seed index. These metrics are valuable but often time consuming to manually gather.
Controlling moisture during the ginning process is critical to fiber quality. A partnership with Mississippi State University continues to make progress on a new moisture measurement system with multiple rounds of test-driven updates. The current system is set up in a seed cotton pipe. The system samples seed cotton as needed while cotton passes freely otherwise. Two types of sensors are being tested, an off-the-shelf sensor and a custom designed model. The advantage of the custom sensor is lower cost and a more direct response to moisture content.
Seed modules are known to vary in moisture content due to harvesting conditions. Cotton quality degrades when stored at high moisture contents. Cotton bales have an upper limit of moisture that is allowed in the market, but such standards do not exist for cotton modules brought to the gin. The module moisture may be influenced by weather, time of day when harvested, and more. Currently most methods of measuring the moisture require inserting a probe or sensor into the cotton module. For a large gin with many cotton modules this process is not practical. ARS researchers in Stoneville, Mississippi, are testing thermal imaging as a way of capturing moisture levels in the modules. Multiple full size cotton modules have been imaged using a thermal camera. This was done multiple times per day and at multiple angles and elevations. If this proves viable, an unmanned aerial system will be able to quickly capture overhead views of modules to monitor their status. Early testing shows that the thermal images are greatly affected by the sun with measurable heat gains in the module wrap over the course of the day.
Adding value to the byproducts produced during the ginning process will improve both the environmental and financial sustainability of cotton ginning (Objective 3). Previous work has stated the need for additives to produce quality pellets, which may be used for many different purposes, from cotton gin byproducts (CGB), however these additives are a major cost. ARS researchers in Stoneville Mississippi produced pellets from both composed CGB and blends of fresh and composted CGB without additives or additional milling. Tests showed that pellets from CGB composts had durability of over 90% according to standard pellet industry test methods. Composting is a common practice for handling CGB in the industry, and these findings indicate that improved pellet quality could be produced with only minor changes to current practices. Additives that are cheaper and more beneficial to the environment were also studied, such as cow manure. One of the studies also examined the physical and chemical properties of cow manure. The end goal is to boost the qualities of CGB pellets with nutrients of cow manure that are useful for soil amendment. Another on-going study is examining the properties of CGB and its compost from gins across four states in the mid-south to better understand the variability of CGB as a manufacturing material.
ARS researchers in Stoneville, Mississippi collected seed samples from upland cotton as part of multiple projects using both a saw gin and a roller gin. Both types of gin stands are being used to understand the relationship between seed damage and equipment. The upland cotton seed is being delinted at the Cotton Production and Processing Research Unit in Lubbock, Texas. Seed samples have also been collected from Gowan hybrid cotton and Pima cotton from both saw and roller gin stands in Stoneville, Mississippi. Before Visible Mechanical Damage can be studied fuzzy seeds, such as upland and hybrid cotton, must have the linters removed. Multiple approaches to delint the seed without causing additional damage are being considered such as chemical, mechanical, and thermal.
Accomplishments
1. Biomass pellets properties. Fuel and fertilizer pellets from cotton gin byproducts (CGB, also called ‘gin trash’) were made and tested by ARS researchers in Stoneville Mississippi. The tests confirmed that pellets can be produced from CGB. Studies have shown that making pellets that meet international standards from CGB is possible but that binders may be needed. The use of waste products as a binder for pellet production will result in environmental and financial benefits. Researchers studied properties of raw and compost manure to improve CGB pellets. CGB pellets made with manure additives are being examined to understand the effects on quality. Enhancing the nutrient and durability qualities of CGB pellets will lead to more profits for ginners and a better environmental result.
2. Curated a dataset of foreign objects in cotton fields collected over three growing seasons and trained proof-of-concept vision models. Plastic found in cotton bales continues to be a big problem for the USA cotton industry, costing over $300 million per year. One potential source of plastic that gets into cotton bales is plastic litter in the fields. The dataset generated by ARS researchers in Stoneville, Mississippi, is the only known example to contain four classes of objects: plastic bags, cans, bottles and general trash, for training an artificial intelligence system. This dataset and the vision models form the foundation upon which plastic in the field is being addressed to prevent the materials from ever entering the cotton supply chain.
3. A method to process energy data into actionable metrics and explore variables affecting energy readings. Reducing the energy cost of making a cotton bale is important. A possible way to reduce this cost is to breed cotton that takes less energy to gin. ARS researchers in Stoneville, Mississippi, enabled such efforts by providing a simple method to detect active ginning while extracting the energy data of each sample. The hardware and software solution reports ginning energy in simple terms. The method was developed using a small breeder gin stand, but early testing shows potential with larger-scale equipment as well. Potential sources of variation in energy values, such as operator, environmental conditions, sample size, and gin components were also explored. The output from the system allows breeders to make selections based on the ginning energy requirements of their samples.
Review Publications
Alege, F.P., Donohoe, S.P., Tumuluru, J., Delhom, C.D., Blake, C.D., Thomas, J.W. 2023. Forage properties of fresh and composted cotton gin byproducts as feed supplements. AgriEngineering. 5(4):1955-1970. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering5040120.
Donohoe, S.P., Alege, F.P., Thomas, J.W. 2023. A tool for semi-automated extraction of cotton gin energy consumption from power data. AgriEngineering. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering5030093.
Donohoe, S.P., Alege, F.P., Blake, C.D., Thomas, J.W. 2023. Energy consumption of a breeder gin stand by sample size and saw. Applied Engineering in Agriculture. 39(6):585-593. https://doi.org/10.13031/aea.15765.
Alege, F.P., Donohoe, S.P., Blake, C.D., Thomas, J.W. 2024. Nutrient Properties of Fresh and Composted Cotton Gin Byproducts and Cattle Manur for Soil Amendment. Journal of the ASABE. 67(1):151-159. https://doi.org/10.13031/ja.15766.