khandeshgp2023@gmail.com

Khandesh Gin Press Owners Association has done a brilliant job in improving the quality of cotton and ‘Mahacot’ brand will surely receive great recognition not only in our country but in the world. Mahacot will always be my first and preferred choice.

Contamination of Cotton: Sources & Remedies

As prevention is better than cure, it is always more desirable not to generate contamination at all than to have to clean it at different stages of processing. To achieve this, all concerned industries have to work together. According to recent survey by ITMF, Indian cotton is amongst the most contaminated cotton in the world so; producing yarns of world class quality from Indian cottons is a greater challenge. This challenge can be met with selection of suitable cottons, appropriate work practices and proper use of modern machines and technologies. Contamination represents a significant threat and element of cost to spinning mills and this led them to implement a range of costly methods to remove the contamination. On analysis it was found that amongst all the areas of textile sectors, “Fiber cultivation to Yarn spinning stage” remains major source of contamination.
 
Sources Of Contamination:
Contaminations are not being grown with cotton balls in the tree. These are mostly “added” in fresh cotton during picking. Contaminations to raw cotton take place at every step i.e. from the farm picking to the ginning stage. Since cotton is picked manually by rural woman so human hair, contamination caused by cloth pieces and fabric sheets are the biggest source of contamination.
 
International Textile Maufactures Federation (ITMF), Zurich, which conducts a survey on cotton contamination every two years, has identified five major sources Of Contamination:
1.Strings made of jute.
2.Strings made of hessian.
3.Fabric made of jute.
4.Fabric made of hessian.
5.Organic matter such as leaves, feather, paper, leather etc. 
 
Contamination within raw material
There are the two possibilities of contamination. As the natural fiber cultivation, ginning, and packing process are mostly manual, chances of oil/grease/rust stain on fiber after the stoppages, or the maintenance activities of spinning machines exist. Handling of packing material during raw material opening Due to poor wrapper quality, wrapper stripe is passing with fiber mixing and converting in small fiber/strip during carding and finally, gets spun with fiber and creates contamination in yarn.
 
Measures To Reduce Contamination: Manual process
We must also change our mind set that cotton being natural fibre is bound to have some contamination as contaminants are not being grown with cotton in the tree these are added during picking and storage etc. and removal / control of the same is certainly possible if the proper cleaning methods are followed. Contaminants like jute, chindies, HDPE, gutkha packs, etc. can be removed by the workers. A team of workers should be appointed at the time of unloading of the trucks & at the time of heaping. It is difficult to detect the contamination due to their unpredictable size, shape, material and position as some of the contaminants get inside the cotton fiber layer and become invisible. This system is costly, time consuming and chances of human error are more.
 
Scanners:
It is more beneficial to remove the contamination in earlier processing stage because of two reasons, first, the early removal enables to prevent the contamination from spreading to a large extent and second, it also helps to avoid more numerous interventions in later stage.
In ginning factories, electronic contamination control system like Vision shield of Reiter, can be installed in the transportation line between ginning and storing, before putting the cotton fiber into Bale press. Average efficiency of this contamination control system is around 40-45% at this stage. The sorting efficiency is 55-70% with a sorting load of 165 kgs/person/8 hr.
 
Cotton Buying Process:
At the time of purchase of cotton spinning mills do not make contamination as a parameter for purchase of cotton and only length, micronaire, moisture content and trash content are mainly considered, even RD value and short fibre contents are also not discussed at this stage therefore ginner is least bothered for level of contamination and RD value etc. Same thing goes with a also as a ginner never check the contamination level before buying seed cotton from a farmer. Faremers who are bringing contaminated cotton should be disdained. Purchasers of cotton think that the contamination shall be removed in the processes of spinning such as blow room, carding, winding, etc. hence they do not give due weightage to this aspect despite a fact that the cleaning of contaminants is the most costliest process in the spinning mills and none of the machines used for removing the contaminants can remove all the contaminants. Since the spinning mills do not consider the contamination as a parameter for purchase of cotton and accepted levels of trash, and moisture are on higher level the ginner do not take up this with the traders or farmers strongly hence they also adopt a casual approach to contamination issue, finally resulting in higher contamination. In the process of cleaning trash and some contaminants get removed hence the machine picked cotton is found with lower trash and contamination, however if proper cleaning is used for the hand picked cotton in ginning and pressing factories the same will certainly have the lower contamination and lower trash with the advantage of better fibre parameters but this is only possible when the ginner gets encouragement to remove the trash and contaminants by being paid a premium for the efforts he has taken to remove the contamination.
 
Educating Farmers:
In India, Traditionally, cotton is picked by rural women manually. Besides many benefits, a big problem of manual cotton picking is that cotton pickers are biggest source of cotton contamination. A number of impurities like pieces of leaves, immature and empty balls, stems, flowers, sticks and weeds, trash and dust, mix with cotton either due to carelessness of pickers.
 
It is common practice among cotton pickers that while picking cotton they make use of plastic bags and silk scarf’s, which mixed with cotton, comes up as an impurity at the time of spinning and dyeing of fibre, yarn and fabrics. Also, since cotton is mostly picked by women, human hair is mixed with cotton at the time of picking. It creates problems at the time of ginning, spinning and weaving and inflicts losses to the industry. In addition, women pickers normally make use of their dupatta or any surplus fabrics sheet or a cloth or polypropylene bags to collect the picked cotton. Contamination from these, mixes up with cotton resulting in substandard fibre.
 
Rural women start picking cotton early in the morning, before the dew has dried up. It affects the quality of cotton especially at the time of making bales and storage. There are also malpractices among cotton pickers to add water to cotton at different intervals to increase its weight. Thus they do get more wages but spoil the quality of cotton. Sometimes picked cotton is stored on wet soil or in watercourses, which spoils it.picked cotton is stored on wet soil or in watercourses, which spoils it.
 

Though often hand picked cotton is perfect in shape,it suffers contamination successively;

 
first at the hands of cotton pickers and farmers and later at market and ginning factories. Generally wages to cotton pickers are paid in the form of cotton, who keep the cotton at their homes until a reasonable quantity is collected to sell it in the market. During the storage of cotton in their homes, cotton gets too many contaminations like human hair, toffee wrappers, birds feathers and small pieces of fabrics, polythene bags, etc. Also colour of the cotton changes if stored for a long time. The contaminated cotton is ultimately sold out to the market in the jute or propylene bags sewed with jute twine to be transported to the ginning factories.
 
Indian is cotton farming community is mainly dominated by small farmers. Most of these farmers produce cotton on small area of their holdings and hence the volume of cotton collected from their farms during the season would not be enough for them to sell it directly in the markets or to the ginning factories. Therefore, they often sell their produce at discount to traders who purchase cotton of the whole area. It is common practice among traders that they transport cotton to market with substandard, immature or contaminated stuff. They also, considering economy of transport, mix up cotton of two varieties or two grades of the same variety, grown in the same locality. It causes contamination of fibre. There is also malpractice among traders that they mix water or crystal salt to raw cotton to make cotton bags gain weight, which leads to further contamination.
 
If proper education is given to the farmers about the causes of contamination through camps & seminars and if farmers are encouraged by being paid for the efforts taken reduce the contamination then it can surely help in reducing the contamination as farm level.
 
B. To make available Stocking at the door (Consumption Point) by CCI and Private Trade, a) Saving inventory time, and ease of logistics,b) Small deliveries to suit the consumption pattern of the Unit,This is all possible without involving multiple taxing which was the case in the past.
 
 
Conclusion:
Contaminations are not being grown with cotton balls in the tree. These are mostly “added” in fresh cotton during Picking, Storage, Ginning & other processes where human comes in contact with the cotton. Contamination is one of the critical issues for spinners to maintain first grade yarn quality. Different methods to reduce contamination are now practiced in cotton ginning to yarn manufacturing processes, which have been reviewed. More and more involvement will definitely improve the contamination removal efficiency of the industry and as a result such a burning issue of contamination may be solved with ease. however there is urgent need to adopt either commercial or regulatory methods as mentioned in the suggestions above or other similar methods to encourage / implement the best ginning practices to achieve this, which in turn will result in lowest contamination and trash in the cotton and lead to sustainability of the cotton as preferred fibre for spinning in the long run.

Related Posts

August 6, 2022

Ms. B. Yuzwan (CEO, Timamin Cotton Exchange, China) Dec. 5, 2012

0
August 6, 2022

The Economic Times, Sept. 21, 2013

0
April 14, 2021

Mr. J. B. Shah (Gill & Company, Mumbai) Sept. 23, 2013

0

Leave a Reply

Recent Comment Widget
Categories
Archives