Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
buggy and quickly resumes harvesting. The boll buggy then takes the cotton to the
module builder. Using a boll buggy to transport cotton from harvester to module
builder can save the harvester time for its primary function (Cotton Incorporated,
2011).
A cotton module builder (Figure 6.2) is a machine used to compress seed cotton
into rectangular packages (modules) for temporary field storage and easy transport
to the gin. During harvesting, a module builder is moved only after one module has
been completed, and is pulled by a tractor to a new location, usually at the edge of
the field. As multiple basket loads of cotton from the boll buggy or the harvester are
dumped into the module builder, the cotton is compressed onto the ground with a
hydraulic ram (also known as tramping system) to form a module. A completed cot-
ton module is about 9.8 m long × 2.3 m wide × 3.1 m high, and weighs about 8500 kg
(Cotton Incorporated, 2011; Parnell et al., 2005). Before being transported to the
gin, the module is generally covered with a tarp to protect the cotton from moisture
and dirt that may damage the fiber quality. A cotton module can be loaded onto a
special truck with a tilting bed and live floor to transport it to the gin for processing.
Modules are often offloaded at the gin yard and reloaded as needed for delivery to
the facility's feed-control system.
Professor Lambert Wilkes of the Department of Agricultural Engineering, Texas
A&M University, developed the Cotton Module Builder between 1971 and 1974
with the support of J.K. (Farmer) Jones of Cotton Incorporated (ASABE, 2011). The
device began to be used in the 1970s, and its use removed the constraint that progress
at the ginning facility had always placed on harvesting. Formerly, cotton producers
placed their harvested cotton in numerous trailers and took them to gins for process-
ing in the order they were received. A typical trailer could hold only about 2000 kg
of seed cotton. The number of trailers owned by a producer and the ginning capacity
at a gin was also limited. When all of a producer's trailers were filled up and a gin
could not process his cotton, he had to stop harvesting and wait for the trailers to be
made available again. This inefficient logistics could make producers miss the opti-
mum harvest time, resulting in quality and yield losses of their cotton in the field due
to weathering (Cotton Incorporated, 2011). Harvested cotton is now stored in mod-
ules in the field or at the gin, so producers can harvest their cotton quickly regardless
of the progress at the gin. Furthermore, mechanical systems such as module trucks
and automated module feeders in gins can handle the cotton in modules more effi-
ciently than was done previously with trailers. Today, virtually all cotton produced
in the United States is placed in modules (Parnell et al., 2005).
Although a cotton module builder is able to form loose seed cotton into dense
modules, the modules must be properly built to preserve fiber quality during the stor-
age period. Improperly built modules often have depressions on the upper surface
that can allow accumulation of water on the top of the module and penetration of
moisture into the module, which can greatly damage the fiber quality. Usually, a cot-
ton module builder is operated by a human operator, so the processes of compressing
and distributing cotton inside the builder to achieve uniform density and minimize
concavity on top of the module is something of an art. Inexperienced module builder
operators may build poorly shaped modules that can cost an average of $200/module
in reduced lint value compared to well-shaped modules (Hardin, 2010; Simpson and
