Peel test: A tool to assess the stickiness of honeydew sugar

People involved in the cotton industry, from growers to spinners, have been concerned about the problem of stickiness encountered during cotton processing from fibres to yarn. Many methods have been successfully developed to identify and measure stickiness and also to reduce the effect of these contaminations. Yet due to the poor fundamental scientific knowledge regarding the mechanisms of sugar adhesion on fibres, the major part of these methods is empirically based. Today, gaining knowledge about stickiness seems impossible without the help of a fundamental study on the accurate composition of honeydew and on the mechanisms of honeydew adhesion. This paper introduces a new quantitative analysis method for honeydew adhesion behaviour measurement. Adhesion measurement has been carried out on both individual sugar and sugar mixture and it reveals a strong influence of moisture content on adhesion energy and a weak influence of the type of metallic surface on adhesion energy. (Résumé d'auteur