Removal of Plastic Sheet Material with Normal Cotton Ginning Equipment

Plastic sheet material is sometimes inadvertently mixed with the seed cotton and is occasionally found in bales of ginned lint.  Normal cleaning equipment found in the gin should remove some of this material but the proportion and type of material which is likely to be removed has not been documented.  Several types of sheet plastic material; such as module wrapping, irrigation tubing, and shopping bags; were cut into several size pieces and added to the seed cotton stream in the Microgin at Stoneville, MS.  These pieces were then retrieved from the waste material removed by the cleaning equipment and from the lint exiting the lint cleaners.  The results of this study will be reported.