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CIRCOT showcases cotton technologies at fibre2fashion co-hosted meet

08 Jan '11

6 min read

Dr PR Roy, Director - fibre2fashion

The next eminent speaker was Dr S Sreenivasan, former Director – CIRCOT, who provided an overview of the cotton technologies to be presented by other speakers, later. He started off by providing a summary of the activities undertaken by CIRCOT. He informed that, CIRCOT undertakes research activities in four major core areas like, ginning; assessment of quality and improvement in fibre, yarn and fabric attributes; pre-treatment and finishing with environment-friendly agents and by-product, biomass and processing waste utilization and value addition in cotton and other natural fibre systems.

With regards to the technologies developed in the area of ginning, he said that they had developed the variable speed DR gin, which enables fibre quality specific adjustment of gin machine parameters, flexible choice of roller and beater speeds and enhanced output with no additional power consumption. The other was the laboratory model gin, which are single and double roller gins of miniature size with varied capacities from 1 kg seed cotton to 50 kg seed cotton per hour, which are suitable for mills, and market yards and need just single phase electricity supply.

He than informed about the Auto Grooving Machine, used for grooving the rollers of the gins in a systematic manner. Another innovation was a rubber roller for DR gin, which are highly productive rollers and is self grooving, along with providing chromium -free lint. CIRCOT has also developed an ERP Software for Modern Ginnery Management, which is a total software package solution for management of men, material and processing in ginnery.

He than revealed the technologies developed in the area of mechanical processing like 'Calibration cotton standards' which is an import substitute product, useful for calibration of HVI, traceable to USDA standards and is very popular among QM units of Indian spinning mills. He than spoke about the 'CIRCOT-TRYTEX Miniature Spinning System', which consists of four table model machines on which both ring and rotor yarns can be produced for sample requirement from 50 gram to a few Kgs, in which state of the art technology and modern electronics have been employed and is suitable for educational institutions, research textile mills and training centres.

With regards to technology developments in the area of chemical finishing, CIRCOT has developed 'Techniques for application of natural dye on cotton yarn and fabric'. In this technique the extraction of dye from natural colourant resources has been standardized, application protocols on to cotton yarn/fabric have been developed with optimum wash fastness attributes and are suitable for adoption by small scale rural based enterprises and small volume, high value dyed lots can be prepared. These dyed yarns find use in handloom industry.

CIRCOT has also developed technology for synthesis of ZnO nano particles to impart antibacterial and UV protection properties to textiles and can also provide UV protection in sun creams and other cosmetic formulations, impart antibacterial activity in medical and military textiles. He further informed that, the production cost for manufacturing the ZnO nano particles is just Rs. 24,000 per kg while the sales price is Rs 80,000 per kg.

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