ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON IMPROVING BELT CONVEYORS FOR FEEDING RAW COTTON TO STACKS AND CLOSED WAREHOUSES

This thesis analyzes scientific and practical work on belt conveyors that feed raw cotton to open stacks and closed warehouses. It is shown that low-grade cotton with a high content of impurities and moisture heats up spontaneously during storage (up to 70–80 °C), that impurities penetrate deeper into the fibre during transport and storage and become harder to remove, and that impact-type cleaning increases damage to fibre and seed. Foreign (US) module technology is found unsuitable for local conditions: it needs 2.5–3 times more land (400 vs. 1000 kg/m²), and pneumatic transfer consumes about 40% of the energy of a gin line. The analysis points to cleaning raw cotton directly in the conveying flow before stacking as a promising direction.