SURVEY OF COTTON CONTAMINATION AT THE GIN STAND FEEDER APRON IN MULTIPLE COMMERCIAL COTTON GINS

Even though there is wide spread recognition that plastic contamination is a major problem for the cotton industry, many cotton gins don't believe they have a problem with it as they are not seeing many plastic contamination calls from their local AMS classing office. Unfortunately, our belief is that the classing process is grossly under-sampling for plastic contamination, so a gin may have a problem with plastic and not be aware of it. Cotton Inc. reports from overseas textile mills supports this conclusion. To address this the specific objectives of the proposed research are to survey the extent of plastic contamination in a sampling of cotton gins by deploying low cost plastic contamination detectors, mounted at the gin-stand feeder apron. The gin stand feeder apron has been selected as it provides the only place in the gin where the cotton is presented in a thin stream of open-locked cotton and is at a position where contamination is easily detected.