Efficiency of cotton stalk puller as influenced by forward speed wheel rotational speed and wheel tilt angle.

Abstract

Cotton is a versatile fibre crop, grown commercially in 111 countries throughout the world. India ranks first in cotton area, which constitutes 20 per cent of the world's cotton area but ranks third representing 12 per cent of the global production. Pulling the cotton stalk using a hand puller is slow, laborious and tedious. An investigation was carried out to mechanize the cotton stalk pulling. The developed unit consists of a gearbox for power transmission and a set of counter rotating pulling wheels. The power for pulling wheels was drawn from the tractor PTO shaft through gearbox. The developed cotton stalk puller was evaluated for its performance in terms of pulling efficiency and per cent break-age of cotton stalk at three levels of (i) forward speed of operation (1.2, 1.6 and 2.0 kph), (ii) wheel rotational speed (140, 180 and 220 rpm) and (iii) wheel tilt angle (10, 20 and 30 degree). The pulling efficiency was maximum at 1.2 kph forward speed of operation followed by mixed results at 1 .6 and 2.0 kph forward speed of operations. The maximum pulling efficiency of 86.63 per cent was obtained at 140 rpm wheel rotational speed, 1 .2 kph forward speed of operation and 30 degree wheel tilt angle combination. Minimum breakage of cotton stalk (7.74 %) was observed at 180 rpm wheel rotational speed, 1.2 kph forward speed of operation and 30 degree wheel tilt angle followed by 220 and 140 rpm wheel rotational speeds. lt was observed that the stalk removal with cotton stalk puller resulted in 3.85 and 94.39 per cent savings in cost and time, respectively. compared to the manual method of cotton stalk removal.