FOURIER-TRANSFORM INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY ANALYSIS OF MODIFIED COTTON TRASH EXTRACTS.

There is an ongoing research effort at the United States Department of Agriculture to improve an existing spectral database, enabling botanical cotton trash samples to be identified through the use of mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy. Leaf, hull, shale, stem, seed, and other types of trash have been reported to be problematic in the efficiency and quality of cotton throughout the textile spinning processes. Currently, several techniques are being employed to detect the presence of trash in cotton (ex. Shirley Analyzer, AFIS™, and HVI™), which are based on physical size and weight. However, more innovative methods need to be explored in order to classify specific types of trash found in cotton during different stages of ginning and textile processing. This research simulates ginning and textile processing by subjecting botanical trash samples to various size reductions and thermal conditions. Prior to performing extractions, trash samples were reduced from their raw sample size using a Wiley Mill with 20 and 80 meshes and then subjected to thermal treatments. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometry was used for the fundamental analysis of these different trash extractions, which were obtained from simulated ginning and textile processing conditions. The infrared spectroscopic data indicated that this technique has the potential to be an approach for locating definite regions of trash types in samples by evaluating the differences that occurred due to heat and particle size reductions during ginning and textile processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]