Implications of Surface Chemistry on Cotton Fiber Processing By Gary R. Gamble

ABSTRACT
Increasing speeds of cotton yarn production
in the textile mill have made it necessary to development
complementary methods to traditional
measurements of physical fiber properties, such as
length and strength, as predictors of yarn spinning
efficiency. With the goal of investigating possible
complementary measures to address this problem,
this research attempts to quantify the pectin, wax,
glucose, and surface electrolyte components of the
cotton fiber in order to develop a chemistry-based
methodology to elucidate currently unknown
factors involved in yarn spinning efficiency. The
amount of each component was measured for 21
cotton samples, and the results are correlated with
micronaire-normalized frictional measurements
based on draft force and fiber-to-fiber friction.
Results indicate that inter-fiber friction decreases
primarily as a function of increasing pectin and
soluble salt components on the cotton fiber surface.
Variations in wax content do not appear to
significantly affect inter-fiber friction relative to
the effects produced by variations in pectin and
salt content. These are important observations
not only from the standpoint of being able to set
fiber processing equipment parameters based
on chemical measurements, but it also raises the
possibility of breeding cotton to produce desirable
spinning characteristics based on the level of
surface chemical components developed during
the fiber growth period. This research provides
results on samples from the first year (crop year
2001) of a 5-year, leading commercial cultivars
study performed by ARS. Further information
obtained in subsequent crop years will be used
to expand the current database.