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INDUSTRY PROFILE
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INDUSTRY PROFILE

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Cotton

Cotton is a soft, staple fiber that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant. It is a natural fiber harvested from the cotton plant. The fiber most often is spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile, which is the most widely used natural-fiber cloth in clothing today.

Processing of Cotton in India

In India the raw cotton, also called as Kapas is processed in a multi-stage process described as below. The Products of processing are
I. Yarn.
II. Cottonseed Oil.
II. Cottonseed Meal.

I. Production of Yarn
KAPAS TO LINT: Kapas (also known as raw cotton or seed cotton) is unginned cotton or the white fibrous substance covering the seed that is obtained from the cotton plant. The first step in the process is, the cotton is vacuumed into tubes that carry it to a dryer to reduce moisture and improve the fiber quality. Then it runs through cleaning equipment to remove leaf trash, sticks and other foreign matter. In ginning a roller gin is used to grab the fiber. The raw fiber, now called lint.

LINT TO BALE: The lint makes its way through another series of pipes to a press where it is compressed into bales (lint packaged for market). After baling, the cotton lint is hauled to either storage yards, textile mills, or shipped to foreign countries.
NOTE: The cotton seed is delivered to a seed storage area from where it is loaded into trucks and transported to a cottonseed oil mill.
BALE TO LAP: Here the bales are broken down and a worker feeds the cotton into a machine called a "breaker" which gets rid of some of the dirt. From here the cotton goes to a "scutcher". (Operated by a worker also called a scutcher). This machine cleans the cotton of any remaining dirt and separates the fibers. The cotton emerges in the form of thin "blanket" called the "lap".

LAP TO CARDING: Carding is the process of pulling the fibers into

parallel alignment to form a thin web. High speed electronic equipment with wire toothed rollers perform this task. The web of fibers is eventually condensed into a continuous, untwisted, rope-like strand called a sliver.
SILVER TO ROVING: The silver is then sent to combing machine. Here, the fibers shorter than half-inch and impurities are removed from the cotton. The sliver is drawn out to a thinner strand and given a slight twist to improve strength, then wound on bobbins. These Process is called Roving.
ROVING TO YARN (SPINNING) : Spinning is the last process in yarn manufacturing. Spinning draws out the short fibres from the mass of cotton and twists them together into a long. Spinning machines have a metal spike called a spindle which the thread winds around.
II. Production of Cotton Seed Oil
Processing of cottonseed in modern mills involves a number of steps. They are as follows:
The first step is its entry into the shaker room where, through a number of screens and air equipment, twigs, leaves and other trash are removed.

The cleaned seed is then sent to gin stands where the linters are removed from the seed (delinted). The linters of the highest grade, referred to as first-cut linters are used in manufacturing non-chemical products, such as medical supplies, twine, and candle wicks. The second-cut linters removed in further delinting steps, are incorporated in chemical products, found in various foods, toiletries, film, and paper.

The delinted seeds now go to the huller. The huller removes the tough seed coat with a series of knives and shakers. The knives cut the hulls (tough outer shell of the seed) to loosen them from the kernels (the inside meat of the seed, rich in oil) and shakers separate the hulls and kernels.
.The kernels are now ready for oil extraction. They pass through flaking rollers made of heavy cast iron, spinning at high speeds. This presses the meats into thin flakes. These flakes then travel to a cooker where they are cooked at 170 degrees F to reduce their moisture levels. The prepared meats are conveyed to the extractor and washed with hexane (organic solvent that dissolves out the oil) removing up to 98% of the oil.
Crude cottonseed oil requires further processing before it may be used for food. The first step in this process is refining. With the scientific use of heat, sodium hydroxide and a centrifuge (equipment used to separate substances through spinning action), the dark colored crude oil is transformed into a transparent, yellow oil. This clear oil may then be bleached with a special bleaching clay to produce a transparent, amber colored oil.
The refined cotton seed oil has several advantages other than edible oils. It contains mere advantage over other edible oils. It contains a large percentage of Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) which maintain cholesterol in the blood at a healthy level.
The quality of cotton oil depends on the weather prevailing during the time that cotton stands in the fields after coming to maturity. Hence quality of oil varies from place to place and season to season. The quality of oil is high in dry seasons and low when the seed is exposed to wet weather in the fields or handled or stored with high moisture. Further cotton seed cooking oil has a long span of life due to the presence of vitamin E.

II. Production of Cottonseed Meal/Cake/Kapaskhalli

Kapaskhalli (cottonseed extraction/meal) is a byproduct of the cottonseed industry.
Cottonseed is a by-product of the cotton plant, which is primarily grown for its fiber. Although cotton has been grown for its fiber for several thousand years, the use of cottonseed on a commercial scale is of relatively recent origin.

Cottonseed was a raw agricultural product, which was once largely wasted. Now it is being converted into food for people; feed for livestock; fertilizer and mulch for plants; fiber for furniture padding; and cellulose for a wide range of products from explosives to computer chip boards.
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