Influence of single locking of cotton bolls on ginning performance of double roller gin for short staple cotton

Abstract

Spike cylinder feeder (M1), saw band cylinder feeder (M2) and combined feeder (M3) comprising of spike cylinder feeder with conventional autofeeder were developed to unlock cotton bolls and feed to double roller (DR) gin. Ginning performance of DR gin with these single locking feeders was compared to conventional autofeeder (Control) for short staple cotton. Ginning performance was measured in terms of ginning output, specific energy consumption, degree of unlocking in terms of decrease in Bulk density, trash content, colour grade and effect on fibre quality parameters. Degree of unlocking found to be improve by 17, 14 and 17% respectively for M1, M2 and M3 respectively as compared to Control. Ginning output increased by 62.32, 36.80 and 48.53% and specific energy decreased by 27.89, 18.92 and 22.04 % for M1, M2 and M3 respectively as compared to Control. The highest ginning output of 41.23 kg/h and lowest specific energy consumption of 0.0685 kWh/kg was found for M1. Spike cylinder feeder showed higher colour grade improvement as compared to other two mechanisms and other fibre quality parameters tested by HVI and AFIS remain unaffected. Post-hoc analysis with Tukey’s test revealed that among three mechanisms, spike cylinder feeding mechanism (M1) was best in terms of improvement in ginning performance of DR gin.