Cotton Ginning

Cotton Seed Processing
Cotton takes five months to grow from a seed to a mature plant, and mature soft-seed cotton is will be collected from the plant. The collected cotton is transported to the processing plant, known as a cotton gin. Gin means short. Generally, gins are set up in cotton-growing areas to avoid the cost of transportation. Cotton gin factories are complete the first stage of cotton processing. Once the cotton arrives at the processing plant, sticks and burrs are removed as well as any lingering debris and seeds. Before gin was invented, the Cotton fibre was traditionally processed by hand. It takes a person a day to separate half a kilo of lint from the cotton seed. Now the automatic processing machine was invented it can sort and bale about 230,000 kilograms of cotton in a day. Depending on the quality of the fibre growth, the bales are marketed for different uses.

The Ginning Process:
Seed cotton arrives at the gin in bales. Then seed cotton bales are first dumped in the module into the feeder, which movies the packed seed cotton into a dispenser. The seed cotton falls onto a conveyor belt, which leads to the hot box or dryer. The dryer mixes the seed cotton with hot air, which allows the moisture to evaporate, making the seed cotton easier to clean. The cotton is dried if it is too wet or water is added if it is too dry, the optimum cotton moisture level should be ‘gin with 5%’.

Next, the cotton goes through several stages of cleaning equipment to remove leaf trash, sticks, dirt, and other waste materials. The seed cotton is ready for the final stage of processing. After cleaning the seed cotton is ready to separate in the feeds a row of machines called gin stands.
The gin stand separates the seed from the fluffy stuff, called the lint.

Inside each stand are 116 circular saws, which are arranged horizontally, each separated by a steel rib. The saw teeth grab the seed cotton and pull the lint through the narrow gap between the saw and rib, then drop it into a conveyor. The lint goes into a flue, which leads to the packing area.
Cotton seed is sold as livestock feed, and cotton seed is also milled into cottonseed oil.

The cotton lint is now ready to be formed into bales. Pipes feed the loose lint to the press area. When it arrives, a pusher moves the lint into a machine called a tamper, which shoves it down into a bale-shaped box. Once the box reaches 227 kg of cotton lint, a press compact the lint and tie-wraps the bale. Next conveyer moves the bale to a bagging machine, while the bale slides into a protective plastic or cotton bag. Now, it is easy to transport the right quality fibre to sell in the market at the right price.
We hope you enjoyed the journey how from the cotton field to the bale.