Abstract

Harvesting is one of the major labour intensive operations in cotton cultivation. Since cotton varieties used in our country require picking at several stages, the using of mechanical pickers is not feasible. Therefore pneumatic pickers were thought of. The dimensions of machine parameters viz. pick up pipe diameter, filter type, filter height, capacity of collection drum and speed of aspirator were varied and they were optimized through statistical analysis. The combination of 25 mm diameter pick up pipe, nylon mesh filter, 300 mm height drum were optimised. The maximum speed of aspirator i.e., 3500 rpm was also optimised. It was found that the field capacity in first picking (4.93 kg/h) was lesser than third picking (5.07 kg/b). The picking efficiency was less in first picking (96.35 %) and more in third picking (97.48%). The trash content was observed as maximum of 15.75 per cent in third picking done by machine. Energy consumption for the pickers was 1910.9068.28 kCal/day. Sound pressure created by picker is 86.22 db.

Keywords: Cotton picker, Energy consumption, Sound pressure.