Automated Sampling Stations for Cotton Gins

The equipment and instrumentation necessary to continuously measure the color, trash, and moisture levels of seed cotton and lint have been developed, tested in the laboratory, and field tested in commercial gin plants for two years. A complete computerized gin process control system including routing valves, sensors, sample collection devices, and computer software has been installed and tested in both a small-scale and a full-scale ginning system. A uniform density of the surface of the cotton sample was required in order to ensure that measurements were within acceptable accuracies. The system relies heavily on the density enhancing equipment which was developed and patented to improve the accuracy of the sensor measurements.