Fermentation of Palm Oil Mill Effluent in the Presence of Lysinibacillus sp. LC 556247 to Produce Alternative Biomass Fuel
, Siti Baidurah 1,*, Naofumi Kamimura 2, Seitaro Matsuda 3, Nurul Alia Syufina Abu Bakar 1, Nik Nur Izzati Muhamad 4, Aizat Hisham Ahmad 4, Debbie Dominic 5 and Takaomi Kobayashi 3Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors present the use of palm oil mill effluent as a fermentation ingredient in the presence of Lysinibacillus sp. for the application of alternative biomass fuel. This is an interesting approach applying a waste material for enhanced the burning of biomass fuel in the boiler. The manuscript is well written, technically sound, and rich in experimental data. Observed results were not a novelty but a technical impact and more interesting towards the scientific community of this field. Besides, the authors provided sufficient background information to support the present work. The authors provided results and discussions were satisfactory to support the present manuscript. However, some issues should be revised:
Point 1: When writing the scientific name of a microorganism, the name should be italicized. Please carefully check throughout the MS. I found several mistake points such as Line 3, 12, 82, 89, 98, 135, 149, 150, ………
Point 2: Page 4 Line 183-184; the equation is missing.
Point 3. Please add all figures and tables in the MS. It's difficult for me to understand what you are meaning, but I am trying.
Point 4: Page 5 Line 239; the number of bacteria cells is correct?
Point 5: Page 6 Line 298-300; please explain why without the presence of Lysinibacillus sp. non-sterile POME portrays a slightly low CEV as compared to that of contains Lysinibacillus sp.
Author Response
Please refer the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I have gone through manuscript entitled „Fermentation of palm oil mill effluent in the presence of 2 Lysinibacillus sp. LC 556247 for the application of alternative biomass fuel” by Mohammad et al., but the text is not suitable for consideration for publication as it lacks results of the investigation.
Comments to the introduction:
POMe- in the introduction there is a lack of more specific description of its chemical characteristics, e.g. what range of COD and BOD does it have? The information about content of minerals in POME i salso too general.
The issue of POME fermentation should be deeply described adn referenced asinvestigations presented in this article should be competitive to previous studies.
This is the end of the review as the authors do not show results of their investigations. There are no figures in the text, I also do not see any supporting materials.
Author Response
Please refer the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The study shows the potential of POME fermentation using locally isolated strain from native POME source to produce biomass fuel in the boiler. The study is new and of interest. The results are well explained.In the manuscript text the authors are referring to 6 figures and 5 tables that are not found in the file provided in this review page. However, I have reviewed the text only.
Author Response
Please refer the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have replied to the comments and corrected the manuscript satisfactorily. It may be accepted for publication.
Author Response
Thank you for the input. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors introduced slight improvement to the text. All figures were also added. However, it is not clear to me how this manuscript is different/better from other similar research? In table 5 authors show that in previous works much better results on POME fermentation were obtained than here. For example, COD and BOD removal efficiency in the reference 63 was >90% while in this work - only c.a. 50%. Also, there is still lack of important information on POME fermentation e.g. what is the result of POME fermenntation - what substances present in POME are degraded, transformed? And how does it look in reference to previous works?
Author Response
Thank you for the input. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
