HIGH DENSITY DUMPING TRIALS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31113, 16 July 1966, Page 9

HIGH DENSITY DUMPING TRIALS

Trials and experiments in high density dumping of bales of wool with a new press with a 500 tons load being built in Auckland will be the initial responsibility of Dr. A. R. Edmunds, a physicist, who has returned to the Wool Research Organisation at Lincoln. For the last two and a half years Dr. Edmunds has been studying at the University of Leeds under a Wool Research Organisation fellowship and previously for nine months he was seconded to the division of textile physics of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation at Ryde, Sydney. The ultimate aim of high density dumping is to save shipping space occupied by wool and hence possibly lead to a reduction in freight rates. It has been suggested that a 20 per cent increase in the density of bales could result in a saving of more than £lm a year in shipping costs. Shipping companies engaged in dumping of wool and the Wool Research Organisation have each put up half the cost of development of the high density dumping press. Dr. Edmunds said that on present information it appeared that the press would be completed and ready for trials in December. It would be remaining in the maker's premises in Auckland and thereafter for six months it would be available for trials and experiments. During this period he said that they would be using the press to gather information about the compression characteristics of various types of New Zealand wools and as a result it was hoped that it would be possible to develop a bale of smaller size which would store better for shipment. The new press will also be compared with conventional dump presses which have a load of not more than 60 tons. Dr. Edmunds said it was hoped to obtain sufficient quantities of the wools with which they would be working to enable it tn be subdivided so that half could be handled through a conventional dump press and the other through the new press. It was hoped to obtain the reaction to the bales produced by the high density press from people handling the wool between the dump stores and the ship, from waterside workers, shipowners and the end users of the woof.

At present Dr. Edmunds said that consideration was being given to the most effective and useful way to do these trials and what types of wool and what quantities would be required. He said

that as the press would be at Auckland wools available from that centre for testing would be largely second shear and shorter wools bought for the carpet trade, but he said that they were in a position to ask buyers for assistance if necessary in securing suitable wools for their investigations. Dr. Edmunds said that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisa-

tion in Australia was doing a good deal of work on higher density dumping, but they were handling different wools and bales of a different size and it was hoped that the work in the two countries would therefore be complementary rather than in competition. It was hoped that there would be close consultations between the two countries.

Whereas the conventional dump press was a vertical operating machine, Dr. Edmunds said that in the high density press the compression was horizontal. The process was also semi-automated with bales coming up a conveyor and then dropping either singly or in pairs into the compression area. The dumped bale was tied manually with wires or bands and then dropped on to another conveyor to be carried away. For his doctorate of philosophy at Leeds Dr. Edmunds worked on an instrument to measure irregularity in the mixing or blending of fibres in yarns. In the past this had been approached by a laborious method involving taking a length of yam, chopping it into many pieces and pulling the pieces apart, looking at them under a microscope and

applying statistical methods of arriving at a measure of the irregularity in mixing. Dr. Edmunds’s instrument is basically a photoelectric cell with irregularity in the shade of the yam being measured by variation in the reflection as the yam passes at two metres a second through a narrow beam of light. As a measure he said that this had agreed quite well with the subjective appraisal of an expert panel of judges. While in Australia Dr. Edmunds worked on a project to develop a rapid method of determining whether bales of wool were excessively wet. About 1961-62 he said it had been felt in Australia that a serious problem existed in that a significant number of bales coming into store for sale were too wet. While it had subsequently been shown that this was a negligible problem in Australia, he said that a probe had been developed which could be inserted into greasy wool to measure the relative humidity of the air in contact with the wool inside the bale. It was possible that the problem existed to a greater extent in New Zealand, and in this case the probe could be useful in this country. Dr. Edmunds, who comes from Auckland, graduated master of science from the University of Canterbury in 1962, and before he went to Australia he was lecturer in physics at Lincoln College.