Design and Development of Walking-type Power-operated Pneumatic Cotton Picker

Alok Gora; R. N. Singh; Hitesh S. Chaudhary

doi:10.52151/jae2023602.1802

Authors

Alok Gora Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Engineering, C.P. College of Agriculture, College of Renewable Energy and Environmental Engineering, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Sardarkrushinagar, Gujarat, India-385506, Author
R. N. Singh Professor, College of Renewable Energy and Environmental Engineering, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Sardarkrushinagar, Gujarat, India-385506, Author
Hitesh S. Chaudhary Research Scholar, College of Renewable Energy and Environmental Engineering, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Sardarkrushinagar, Gujarat, India-385506 Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52151/jae2023602.1802

Keywords:

Cotton picking, harvesting loss, picking efficiency, pneumatic cotton picking

Abstract

Cotton verities do not mature at a particular time under Indian climatic conditions, for which mechanisation of cotton-picking operations is still a major problem. Development of mechanical device for selective picking of cotton is thus necessary. A walking-type power-operated pneumatic cotton picker was designed based on suction mechanism. The conceptual design of the cotton picker with major components viz., prime mover, trolley frame, aspirator, cotton collection drum, and suction pipe with picking spout was done using Pro-E wildfire 2.0 software. Field evaluation was done with 3 levels of picking spout diameter (30, 40, 50 mm) and 4 levels of aspirator speed (3000, 4000, 5000, 6000 rpm). The maximum air velocity, suction pressure, picking capacity, and picking efficiency were 13.97 m.s-1, 0.049 kg.cm-2, 9.23 kg.h-1, and 95.73%, respectively. Minimum fuel consumption of 1.35 l.h-1 was observed at aspirator speed of 3,000 rpm, and the lowest harvesting loss of 6.51% was observed with a combination of 30 mm × 6000 rpm. The savings in cost and time compared to the traditional manual method of cotton picking were 52.77% and 60%, respectively.

References

Anon. 1995. Test codes and Procedures for Farm Machinery Regional Network on Agricultural Machinery (RNAM), Bangkok, Thailand.

Church A H. 1989. Centrifugal Pumps and Blowers. John Wiley & Sons Pvt. Ltd., Canada, 260-267. ISBN:9780471156420, 0471156426

Chaudhary M R. 1997. Harvesting and ginning of cotton in the world. In: Proc. Belt Wide Cotton Conference, New Orleans, USA, 16-18.

Coskum M B. 2003. Determination of variety effect of simple cotton-picking machine on design parameters. Pak. J. Biol. Sci., 6 (7), 640-643.

Gora Alok; Singh R N; Chavda Jaypalsinh. 2020. Physical properties of cotton bolls (GTHH-49). Int. J. Curr. Microbiol. Appl. Sci., 9(06), 4064-4069.

Kathiria R. 2014. Development and evaluation of knapsack power driven cotton picker: A mechanized solution for cotton harvesting. Scholars’ Press, Edition I, ISBN 9783639718454.

Murugesan R; Shukla S K; Arude V G; Patil P G. 2004. Development of shoulder mounted power-driven cotton picker. Agric. Eng. Today, 28(1-2), 54-58.

Patil N A; Bhatt Y C; Tiwari G S; Pawar Shashi Kant; Wandkar Sachin. 2015. Development and performance evaluation of pneumatic plucking system for knapsack type cotton plucker. Agric. Eng. Today, 39(2), 25-31.

Rangasamy K; Selvan M Muthamil; Durairaj C Divaker. 2006. Optimization of machine parameters ofpneumatic knapsack cotton picker. Agric. Mech. Asia Afr. Lat. Am., 37(3), 9-14.

Sandhar N S. 1999. Mechanized picking of cotton in Punjab. Agric. Eng. Today, 23(5-6), 21-27.

Selvan M Muthamil; Rangasamy K; Durairaj C Divaker. 2004. Development and evaluation of trolley mounted cotton picker. Madras Agric. J., 91(7-12), 433-440.

Selvan M Muthamil; Rangsamy K; Ananthakrishna D; Manian R. 2007. Mechanical picking of cotton. Agric. Rev., 28(2), 118-126.

Verma V K; Mathur R. 2016. Performance evaluation of knapsack type portable engine operated cotton picker. Int. J. Agric. Eng., 9(2), 156-162.