Cotton in the new millennium: advances, economics, perceptions and problems

Cotton is the most significant natural fibre and has been a preferred choice of the textile industry and consumers since the industrial revolution began. The share of man-made fibres, both regenerated and synthetic fibres, has grown considerably in recent times but cotton production has also been on the rise and accounts for about half of the fibres used for apparel and textile goods. To cotton’s advantage, the premium attached to the presence of cotton fibre and the general positive consumer perception is well established, however, compared to commodity man-made fibres and high performance fibres, cotton has limitations in terms of its mechanical properties but can help to overcome moisture management issues that arise with performance apparel during active wear. This issue of Textile Progress aims to: i. Report on advances in cotton cultivation and processing as well as improvements to conventional cotton cultivation and ginning. The processing of cotton in the textile industry from fibre to finished fabric, cotton and its blends, and their applications in technical textiles are also covered. ii. Explore the economic impact of cotton in different parts of the world including an overview of global cotton trade. iii. Examine the environmental perception of cotton fibre and efforts in organic and genetically-modified (GM) cotton production. The topic of naturally-coloured cotton, post-consumer waste is covered and the environmental impacts of cotton cultivation and processing are discussed. Hazardous effects of cultivation, such as the extensive use of pesticides, insecticides and irrigation with fresh water, and consequences of the use of GM cotton and cotton fibres in general on the climate are summarised and the effects of cotton processing on workers are addressed. The potential hazards during cotton cultivation, processing and use are also included. iv. Examine how the properties of cotton textiles can be enhanced, for example, by improving wrinkle recovery and reducing the flammability of cotton fibre

FPA Tuned Fuzzy Logic Controlled Synchronous Buck Converter for a Wave/SC Energy System

This paper presents a flower pollination algorithm (FPA) tuned fuzzy logic controlled (FLC) synchronous buck converter (SBC) for an integrated wave/ supercapacitor (SC) hybrid energy system. In order to compensate the irregular wave effects on electrical side of the wave energy converter (WEC), a SC unit charged by solar panels is connected in parallel to the WEC system and a SBC is controlled to provide more reliable and stable voltage to the DC load. In order to test the performance of the designed FLC, a classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is also employed. Both of the controllers are optimized by FPA which is a pretty new optimization algorithm and a well-known optimization algorithm of which particle swarm optimization (PSO) to minimize the integral of time weighted absolute error (ITAE) performance index. Also, the other error-based objective functions are considered. The entire energy system and controllers are developed in Matlab/Simulink and realized experimentally. Real time applications are done through DS1104 Controller Board. The simulation and experimental results show that FPA tuned fuzzy logic controller provides lower value performance indices than conventional PID controller by reducing output voltage sags and swells of the wave/SC energy system