Technological Advancement in Harvesting of Cotton Stalks to Establish Sustainable Raw Material Supply Chain for Industrial Applications: a Review

The cultivation of cotton produces about 2–3 tonne of residues per hectare after harvesting. Uprooting and disposal of such a huge amount of cotton residues have become a serious problem. In this review, different technologies developed for clearing standing cotton stalks from the field, performances of available technologies, limitations, and technological gap for future work are discussed. Unlike other crop residues, cotton residue has fiber properties similar to most hardwood species. Hence, it is more suitable for various industrial applications like production of particle board, hardboard, pulp, paper, and corrugated boxes. It is also a cleaner fuel as compared to coal due to lower carbon and ash content based on ultimate analysis. Therefore, it can be used as fuel for power plant and as bio-energy. The potential of the use of cotton stalks for composting, briquetting, biochar, bio-oil, and bioethanol production, etc. is also discussed in the paper. It was observed that, the cotton waste was available in abundance; however, efficient machinery to remove the cotton stalks from field and simultaneously convert it into storable or directly usable form as a raw material for various applications was needed. The use of cotton stalks is techno-economically feasible for various applications but still more work is required in bio-ethanol production from cotton stalks to improve the yield of ethanol and for making the process more economical.