Kinetics of Dust Removal from Cotton by Repetitive Mechanical Cleaning

Abstract

In Part I of this series, the underlying mechanism and kinetics of the process of removing dust from cotton by repetitive mechanical cleaning were proposed to fit a theoretical mathematical model defined as the decreasing-force model [12]. This paper describes the successful testing of the model against a kinetic data base produced by repetitive cleaning of cotton with a fiber blender. The fiber blender allowed for a low rate of dust removal from cotton, and so meaningful experimental data (fiber-frictional force and airborne dust concentration in the fiber matrix and in the external environ ment) were taken over a wide range of processing stages. The premise that the logarithm of the fiber-frictional force is proportional to the reciprocal of the pass number is shown experimentally (correlation coefficient r = 0.9329). Also, the premise that the logarithm of the airborne dust concentration, in the fiber matrix and in the external environment, is proportional to the logarithm of the pass number is shown experi mentally ( fiber matrix r = -0.9995, external environment r = -0.9989). Because of deviation of the data base from the ideal behavior demanded by the decreasing-force model, however, the rate constant could not be computed by the method presented in Part I.