A New Method to Rapidly Assess the Stickiness of Cotton

Rapid assessment of the stickiness of cotton can be accomplished with a new apparatus designed, constructed, and tested at the U.S. Cotton Ginning Laboratory at Stoneville, Mississippi, and at a commercial laboratory. The apparatus essentially consists of a cabinet equipped with an infrared moisture sensor, resistance sensor, and compression platen. The apparatus may be used as a stationary laboratory device or it may be used for continuous, online monitoring in a gin or textile environment. The infrared moisture meter responds to the level of natural sugar and insect sugar that is contained within the sample whereas the resistance moisture content is affected only slightly. Results of several studies involving a number of cottons grown across the cotton belt indicated that the instrument can correctly estimate whether a sample is sticky or not about 75% of the time.