Steps towards suitable stickiness test results for trading and processing

Stickiness has been defined as “the propensity of honeydew contaminated fibres to stick to spinning parts during their processing”. Several measuring methods have been designed to measure that type of stickiness using various measuring principles, but still their results are not converging for each individual contaminated cotton. Based on accumulated results within the periodical ITMF-ICCTM round-test for stickiness methods, this paper focusses on the major constraints that have to be levelled-out with the next steps of the international harmonization work for this property. The final aim is to allow the use of stickiness results for trading when required

Stickiness and fiber characteristics related to fiber processing efficiency and yarn quality

For a long time, the ITMF-ICCTM working group has intended to harmonize stickiness measurement results. Since 2013 and 2021, intense analyses have been done at Cirad, looking at the relationship between fiber stickiness and spinnability. For this, a wide range of materials with various stickiness levels was included. As a starting point for this publication, a bibliography review shows the published prediction equations of the spinnability of sticky materials in terms of productivity and yarn quality from both fiber characteristics and/or stickiness levels, both in microspinning and industrial spinning experiments. Publications of such equations were found using fiber properties on one side and stickiness alone on the other. Our practical experiments indicated possible combined incidences between fiber characteristics and stickiness when predicting spinning productivity and cotton yarn quality of various fiber characteristics and stickiness levels. To explain yarn productivity and quality in a new way, microspinning experiments were conducted in controlled conditions, measuring stickiness as an additional explanatory variable to the set made of fiber characteristics. We finally propose models predicting yarn productivity and quality based on significant effects of measured stickiness with fiber characteristics together. In short, this means that some fiber properties (such as UHML) can alleviate the impact of stickiness problems in microspinning. This may have incidences on how cotton is produced from breeding to harvest, how it is sold, and how it is transformed through ginning, testing, marketing, selecting bales in laydowns, and spinning operations