Enhancement of Quality of Indian Cottons through Optimization of Roller Gin Machine Parameters

Abstract

Double Roller Ginning machines are commonly used in India for ginning of seed cotton where fibres are separated from the cotton seeds. The double roller gin plays the dominating role in the Indian ginning industry due to gentle handling of fibres. However, earlier studies revealed that frequent wear and tear of such gin machines affect the quality of Indian cotton particularly in terms of seed coat fragments, short fibres, neps etc. Because of high wear and tear of critical parts of the gin machine, various setting between parts get disturbed frequently and hence the quality of cotton gets deteriorated as well as productivity is decreased. There are certain critical parameters need to be optimized which are: Sharpness of moving and fixed knives, Condition of leather roller, Gin machine speed and
Moisture Content present in raw material (Seed Cotton). A series of experiments using the above parameters has been conducted in order to identify their effect on cotton characteristics like Length, Short fibre content, Seed Coat Fragments, Fibrous neps etc. Ginned Cotton samples have been tested in appropriate instruments like HVI, Cotton Trash Analyzer and Moisture measuring system. With these studies appropriate optimization has been found to be possible and helpful to the ginning/spinning industries for minimising the deficiency present in the Indian cottons.Seed Cotton havind standard moisture content (around 7.5 %) yields better ginning performance in all respect i.e. Fibre length, Feibre Strength. Trash Content, Gin productivity as well Cotton Realization. In addition to this, ginning machinery parameters/conditions like better condition of leather roller as well fixed and moving knives help in achieving higher gin productivity and Cotton realization having low trash content. However, lower gin machine speed minimises the trash content in cotton but at the cost of gin productivity.