Sustainable Waste Management at Household Level with Black Soldier Fly Larvae (Hermetia illucens)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In peri-urban and rural areas, it is difficult and costly to collect or recycle (animal feeding and composting) biowaste. Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL), as an emerging technology, could convert biowastes to stable residue. In the paper, the authors introduced a variety of research projects on BSFL. However, the authors claimed that it is unknown whether the household BSFL recycle bin acceptable and practical. Thus, the BSFL bins have been placed in 10 households for 3 cycles (15 days each cycle) to check the feasibility. Instructions and precautionary measures have been set before or during the experiments. The results show that the 90% of the biowaste is reduced, among which, 77% is attributed to metabolism and 13% is bioconversion. There are several issues need to be concerned.

1. Since the goal of this work is to investigate whether BSFL could be used for biowaste treatment in rural area, it is better to mention how much percent of biowaste is generated in peri-urban and rural areas.
2. Temperature should be one of the most important parameters for BSFL bins. However, the authors only mentioned that the temperature is between 23 to 38℃. It is highly recommended to record the temperature change during the experiments.
3. Control experiments (without BSFL) are also needed, because houseflies and food degradation might also affect the results.
4. In Table 1, split lines should be added to separate different households results.
5. In Equation 1, I think a bracket is missing.
6. In Equation 4, on the right of the equation, does it need to be divided by Wdi-R? Since M in figure 2 is a ratio.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author(s)

Reading this paper, I feel the followings:

• This research topic is clear and research outline is easy to understand.
• This study has careful filed survey and obtained results are suggestive.
• Readers of this paper can obtain many knowledges related to BSFL.

Thus, I recommend for the editor to accept this paper for publication.

Sincerely,

a reviewer.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is not carefully prepared. There are many flaws in terms of editing, use of words, and presentation. The reviewer suggest authors to prepare them neatly and according to the MDPI style before re-submitting. Please check all the comments (notes) in the attached document for details and respond to them one by one. 

Content-wise, the study has potential to be publishable after major revision. Since the present state of the paper is not yet reader-friendly, it may require several more rounds of reviews. 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed most of my queries, and I find that the overall quality of the manuscript is significantly improved from the revisions. 

Author Response

Thank you, with your feed back we were able to improve our paper's content.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has improved but it needs further technical improvements such as:

1. The sections numbering is using 1.0, 2.0 and so on, the zeros are unecessary
2. Some ot the findings are written as a numbered list, some of them can be made into tables.
3. Some of the sentences in the numbered  list started with a figure (value) instead of a word, this is wrong and must be corrected

 

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback. Concerning your following comments please note:

1. The sections numbering is using 1.0, 2.0 and so on, the zeros are unecessary.

- All such numbering has been modified and '0' has been removed

2. Some ot the findings are written as a numbered list, some of them can be made into tables.

- Findings have been tabulated as Table 2 and thus section 3.14 and 3.15 have been removed

3. Some of the sentences in the numbered  list started with a figure (value) instead of a word, this is wrong and must be corrected

- All such sentence starting have been corrected in line with the comment which can be seen as track changes