Research in New Applications May Boost West TX Cotton Industry
September 28, 2010 Lubbock Avalanche Journal
First, it was greater yield potential for cotton.
Next, there were herbicide, pesticide and drought-resistant varieties.
Now, a Tech Texas professor said his innovative research projects will take the cotton industry in West Texas to the next level.
Seshadri Ramkumar, an associate professor in The Institute of Environmental and Human Health’s department of toxicology, recently received continued funding for 2011. He received $15,000 for two projects from the Texas State Support Program of Cotton Incorporated and $40,000 for two other projects from the Texas Department of Agriculture.
“Cotton is a smart fiber,” Ramkumar said. “No other place (than West Texas) has all activities in cotton and the public support.”
Of those four research ventures, he said there are two “out of the box” ideas that would make U.S. cotton even more valuable than it already is: cotton fabrics that expel chemicals and a more comfortable cotton variety.
For the past four or five years with TDA funding, Ramkumar and his team of graduate students have been hard at work developing a new value-added cotton product using nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is a science of technology dealing with objects at a molecular level or at the size of a nanometer – one billionth of a meter.
The product is a self-cleaning cotton material coated with nanotechnology that acts as a filter to ensure toxic chemicals do not pass through and come in contact with the wearer. Through a process called electrospinning, the white nanotechnology fibers stick to the denim with an electric charge. An electrospinning machine, constructed in the lab, has a syringe containing a mixture of water and polyethylene oxide. The machine steadily pushes the liquid mixture through the syringe, the electric charge attaches to that mixture and what comes out of the syringe are many tiny fibers that coat a piece of denim with a thin, film-like layer.
Regular denim only traps about 40 percent of chemicals, whereas the denim with nanotechnology is more effective and traps about 97 percent, said Muralidhar Lalagiri, a doctoral student, who tested the two fabrics in Ramkumar’s lab.
Ramkumar said this nanotechnology could be used to create protective clothing or face masks for firefighters, emergency workers, soldiers and even producers spraying pesticide. The final material would have a thin cotton material stitched together to the nanofiber-coated denim to keep the nanotechnology sandwiched in between those fabrics.
“People have been using electrospinning only for synthetic materials so very few people have been thinking about using it for cotton and cotton-based products,” he said. “We could either develop cotton nanofiber itself or put it on cotton fabrics and see if it enhances its value.”
He plans to use the TDA funding to continue refining the electrospinning process and improve the overall product.
Todd Staples, Texas agriculture commissioner, said research such as the work conducted at Ramkumar’s Advanced Materials Lab creates positive economic activity for the state.
“This nanotechnology project is an example of how making smart investments results in jobs for Texas,” he said.
A second project, funded by Cotton Incorporated, could lead producers to plant certain varieties of cotton for different niche markets wanting a certain cotton quality.
About three years ago, Ramkumar and a group of researchers identified a biological marker – a complex sugar known as verbascoss – which plays a role in cotton fiber development and its comfort.
“That’s a game-changer in the cotton industry if we could identify those basic chemistries in cotton which can build comfort,” he said. “This would go beyond what gins typically grade cotton on
micronaire, color, leaf, strength and trash.”
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