Assessment of Sand and Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia
and Mohammed Farhan 1,3Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors studied about the glass production in Saudi Arabia. I found it is an interesting topic which is suitable for the reader of this journal. However, there are several issues to be solved with the current manuscript.
The authors performed experiments and evaluations in this study. Please specify the equipments used, particularly for the evaluation (machine type, manufacturers), e.g. XRF, microindentation.
How did the authors decide the composition of the glass as mentioned in section 2? The authors may elaborate about existing ceramic glasses, rather than just mention the reason written in line 197, because nobody did it.
The discussion is rather qualitative. Please discuss the transparency of the glass and the crystalline size quantitatively. Transparency of glass is important in many applications, e.g. window. While quantitative discussion of the crystalline size helps in discussing the hardness of the glass. Compare the results with commercially available glasses. The definition of crystalline/grain size also has to be cleared.
The authors mentioned that the indentation was performed 5 times for each samples. How was the distribution of the hardness? How was the measurement condition (depth, location)? Looking at e.g. Fig. 5(d), there may be a difference when the test is performed on the transparent part and the part with glassy pattern. It is also helpful to compare the results with commercially available glasses.
Another minor issue. Please define abbreviations at their first use, e.g. low-E at line 102.
Author Response
Dear Prof. reviewer
I thank you very much for your concern about my paper (Ref. No.: sustainability-1893857) titled “Prospects and State of the Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia and a preliminary assessment of the quality of Glass and Glass-Ceramics Fabrication" and appreciate your valuable comments on my work. Kindly, please find my replying on your comments in the following points.
Editor Notes:
Based on the native English reviewer’s advice, we modified the title of the paper to be “Assessment of Sand and Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia”.
Comment #1: The authors studied about the glass production in Saudi Arabia. I found it is an interesting topic which is suitable for the reader of this journal. However, there are several issues to be solved with the current manuscript.
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. This work is a part of feasibility study related to evaluating the huge amount of sand located in different areas inside Saudi Arabia and to check the feasibility of using these sands in producing glasses. It will be an important reference to people related to the glass industry here in Saudi Arabia and to prospective investors in this country and abroad.
Comment #2: The authors performed experiments and evaluations in this study. Please specify the equipments used, particularly for the evaluation (machine type, manufacturers), e.g. XRF, microindentation
Authors Reply
Done in the submitted manuscript.
Comment #3: How did the authors decide the composition of the glass as mentioned in section 2? The authors may elaborate about existing ceramic glasses, rather than just mention the reason written in line 197, because nobody did it.
Authors Reply
The composition of normal glasses is well known in the literature. Regarding the crystallization catalysts, we tried to add many compounds other than mentioned in the literature. Only those compounds give a positive result.
Comment #4: The authors mentioned that the indentation was performed 5 times for each samples. How was the distribution of the hardness? How was the measurement condition (depth, location)? Looking at e.g. Fig. 5(d), there may be a difference when the test is performed on the transparent part and the part with glassy pattern. It is also helpful to compare the results with commercially available glasses.
Authors Reply
We totally agree with the reviewer comment. Hardness measurements were performed through a Vickers microhardness tester. 5 reading were taken for each sample and the average as recorded. The tests were performed in etched samples to clearly show the structure. We tried to take the indentation in the crystalline areas.
Comment #5: Another minor issue. Please define abbreviations at their first use, e.g. low-E at line 102.
Authors Reply
Done in the submitted manuscript.
Thanks for your guidance and I hope to cooperate with you in the near future.
Best Regards
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I recommend to accept the paper. It is discussing an important topic, and it's well written.
Author Response
Dear Prof. Reviewer
I thank you very much for your concern about my paper (Ref. No.: sustainability-1893857) titled “Prospects and State of the Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia and a preliminary assessment of the quality of Glass and Glass-Ceramics Fabrication" and appreciate your valuable comments on my work. Kindly, please find my replying on your comments in the following points.
Editor Notes:
Based on the native English reviewer’s advice, we modified the title of the paper to be “Assessment of Sand and Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia”.
Reviewer comment
I recommend accepting the paper. It is discussing an important topic, and it's well written
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. Most of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabian areas are covered by vast sandy deserts, which consists mainly of silica. These sandy deserts not used until now. Also, there was no real academic study concerned with this issue in details. This work is a part of feasibility study related to evaluating the huge amount of soil located in different areas inside Saudi Arabia and to check the feasibility of using these sands in producing glasses. So, the introduction section tries to cover all these items. Also, to check the demands of domestic market from different types of glasses. At the end of this work, few experiments were performed to be sure that glasses van be fabricated from these raw materials. We expect that this work will be a reference for may academics, businessmen, and other interested people.
This is the first work of series of papers that we intend to publish. The next work will go deeply on the properties of formed glass (thermal analysis, physical and mechanical). different treating routs to be used.
Thanks for your guidance and I hope to cooperate with you in the near future.
Best Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The article is current. It is a good economic overview of the state of the glass industry in Saudi Arabia. This manuscript can be published in the Entropy journal after major revision taking into account some of the remarks described below.
1) Devices (company name, year and place of manufacture) that were used in the study are not written. It is necessary to write the manufacturer and the purity of the reagents used.
2) In table 2, it is necessary to provide numerical values with the same accuracy (number of digits after the decimal point)
3) How was the particle size of the added VC, WC, TiC, Y2O3 catalysts determined.
4) Incorrectly written oxide Al2O3.SiO2 (line 240)
5) The process of obtaining samples 1-6 is not clearly described. Probably the original mixing of sand, soda ash, catalysts, limestone was done. the calcination of this mixture is done at 1150°C. Perhaps, after heating this mass, the stepwise crystallization process for the formed glasses was repeated. Is it so? It is necessary to more clearly prescribe the methodology for obtaining samples 1-6.
6) It is necessary to write the conditions for cooling the samples.
7) Replace # sign with №
8) The authors considered the use of sand from the Ar-Rayis region. How sand from other regions can be used, which were investigated in this paper.
9) There is no characterization of the geographical areas from which the sand was collected for research. Why these areas were chosen?
10) Literature data for other glass transition catalysts should be cited.
Author Response
Dear Prof. Editors
I thank you very much for your concern about my paper (Ref. No.: sustainability-1893857) titled “Prospects and State of the Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia and a preliminary assessment of the quality of Glass and Glass-Ceramics Fabrication" and appreciate your valuable comments on my work. Kindly, please find my replying on your comments in the following points.
Editor Notes:
Based on the native English reviewer’s advice, we modified the title of the paper to be “Assessment of Sand and Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia”.
Comment #1: The article is current. It is a good economic overview of the state of the glass industry in Saudi Arabia. This manuscript can be published in the Sustainability journal after major revision taking into account some of the remarks described below.
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. the paper was modified according to your comment.
Comment #2: Devices (company name, year and place of manufacture) that were used in the study are not written. It is necessary to write the manufacturer and the purity of the reagents used.
Authors Reply
Done in the submitted manuscript.
Comment #3: In table 2, it is necessary to provide numerical values with the same accuracy (number of digits after the decimal point)
Authors Reply
Done in the submitted manuscript.
Comment #4: How was the particle size of the added VC, WC, TiC, Y2O3 catalysts determined
Authors Reply
The particle size of the glass-ceramics reagents (VC, WC, TiC, Y2O3) were mentioned in the fourth column in Table 3.
Comment #5: Incorrectly written oxide Al2O3.SiO2 (line 240)
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. The sillimanite (Al2SiO5) was corrected in the submitted manuscript.
Comment #6: The process of obtaining samples 1-6 is not clearly described. Probably the original mixing of sand, soda ash, catalysts, limestone was done. the calcination of this mixture is done at 1150°C. Perhaps, after heating this mass, the stepwise crystallization process for the formed glasses was repeated. Is it so? It is necessary to more clearly prescribe the methodology for obtaining samples 1-6.
Authors Reply
We totally agree with the reviewer comment. The sands that used in glass must be over 98% pure silica and contain almost no impurities. Any small amount of metallic oxides will affect the glass color or cause some defects in the finished glass. In our study, we don’t much care about the color of the produced glass. We do care of the process and the glass microstructure. By the way, we tried to treat this point in the submitted manuscript.
Comment #7: It is necessary to write the conditions for cooling the samples.
Authors Reply
We totally agree with the reviewer comment. The cooling rate will greatly affect the quality and structure of the resulted glass. In our experiment, we used the furnace cooling technique that gives the glass a chance to slowly cools down to room temperature. A slow cooling rate allows the structure to be reorganized from the disordered liquid structure to the partially ordered glassy phase in case of glass or ordered crystalline phase in case of glass-ceramics, with a dramatic reduction in the coefficient of thermal expansion and a smaller residual stress.
Comment #8: Replace # sign with №
Authors Reply
Done in the submitted manuscript.
Comment #9: The authors considered the use of sand from the Ar-Rayis region. How sand from other regions can be used, which were investigated in this paper.
Authors Reply
We considered only the sands from the Ar-Rayis region due its relatively high purity. Other regions have sands of lower silica that can be used in many other applications.
Comment #10: There is no characterization of the geographical areas from which the sand was collected for research. Why were these areas chosen?
Authors Reply
Actually, Saudi Arabia is very wide country. It is almost 2.15 million km². We choose those areas because they are near to our city (Madinah Munawara).
Comment #11: Literature data for other glass transition catalysts should be cited.
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. this part in Section 1 was modified as “glass-ceramics are crystalline materials obtained when a glass of specific compositions was mixed with small amount of crystallization agents, such as TiO2 or CaF2 or ZrO2 or other titanate phases, such as BaTiO3, PbTiO3, and subjected to devitrification heat-treatment. The properties of the resulted glass-ceramics were controlled through the chemical compositions of the ingredients, devitrification heat-treatment sequence and cooling rate [6-11]. However, many glasses are stable against crystallization, therefore the choice of specified compositions is important in order to get glass-ceramics. Glass-ceramics are used in a wide range of technical applications including construction, domestic, military and in the microelectronics industry [6].”
Thanks for your guidance and I hope to cooperate with you in the near future.
Best Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have made some modification to the manuscript. It now seems better. However, please reflect 2 following comments from my review at the previous round in the manuscript. The author provided some answer but the answer was not reflected in the manuscript.
Regarding the composition of the ceramic glass. Please elaborate in the manuscript, including the negative results obtained by the authors. Negative results will also be a good reference for future projects regarding the glass fabrication in Saudi Arabia.
Regarding the hardness. Please provide the standard deviation of the measurement next to the average values, which is common for statistical measurements. It is also common to attach depth vs force curve of the indentation experiment to prove the validity of the experiment.
Author Response
Dear Prof. reviewer
I thank you very much for your concern about my paper (Ref. No.: sustainability-1893857) titled “Assessment of Sand and Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia" and appreciate your valuable comments on my work. Kindly, please find my replying on your comments in the following points.
Comment #1: The authors have made some modification to the manuscript. It now seems better. However, please reflect 2 following comments from my review at the previous round in the manuscript. The author provided some answer but the answer was not reflected in the manuscript.
Regarding the composition of the ceramic glass. Please elaborate in the manuscript, including the negative results obtained by the authors. Negative results will also be a good reference for future projects regarding the glass fabrication in Saudi Arabia.
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. We agree with the reviewer comment that the negative results are important in such kind of studies. For that reason, we displayed the chemical compositions of the sands collected from different places. We added “A quantity of 70 wt.% of the sand from Area 3 (Ar-Rayis) was chosen as the main constituents to fabricate the glass products, due to the high percentage of silica. Actually, most glass companies prefer to use sands that have silica of purity of more than 99% and contain practically no impurities. Any small amount of metallic oxides will affect the glass color or cause some defects in the finished glass. For that reason, sand of other places is not suitable for glass manufacturing due to the high percentages of impurities.”
Comment #2: Regarding the hardness. Please provide the standard deviation of the measurement next to the average values, which is common for statistical measurements. It is also common to attach depth vs force curve of the indentation experiment to prove the validity of the experiment.
Authors Reply
The standard deviations were added in the hardness measurements in Table 4 as follows:
Table 4. Microhardness of the fabricated samples.
|
Sample No. |
Hardness Kg/mm2 (Standard deviation) |
|
Plain glass |
312 (6.63) |
|
2 (VC) |
417 (13.40) |
|
3 (WC) |
640 (12.82) |
|
4 (TiC) |
710 (24.18) |
|
5 (Y2O3) |
687 (17.58) |
Regarding the depth of the indentation for hardness test, the data is not available for this study. The next paper will concentrate on the physical and mechanical properties of the fabricated glass-ceramics.
Thanks for your guidance and I hope to cooperate with you in the near future.
Best Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I thank the respected editors and authors for the work done.
I think, this manuscript must have minor revision taking into account and some of the remarks described below:
Unfortunately, I did not find an answer to question number 4. Please tell me who is the manufacturer of your catalysts and, in general, of all the reagents that you used in your work? How did you measure the particle size of the catalysts? Please indicate the purity of all reagents used, not just catalysts.
Author Response
Dear Prof. Editors
I thank you very much for your concern about my paper (Ref. No.: sustainability-1893857) titled “Assessment of Sand and Glass Industry in Saudi Arabia" and appreciate your valuable comments on my work. Kindly, please find my replying on your comments in the following points.
Comment #1: I thank the respected editors and authors for the work done.
I think, this manuscript must have minor revision taking into account and some of the remarks described below:
Unfortunately, I did not find an answer to question number 4. Please tell me who is the manufacturer of your catalysts and, in general, of all the reagents that you used in your work? How did you measure the particle size of the catalysts? Please indicate the purity of all reagents used, not just catalysts.
Authors Reply
Thanks for your comment. · Soda Ash: 99.95% Pure Sodium Carbonate (InoChem, Dammam, KSA).· Limestone: 99% Calcium Carbonate and 1% Silica (SaudiLime, New Industrial Area, Riyadh, KSA)· Catalysts (VC, WC, TiC, and Y2O3): Imported from Nanoshel UK Ltd., CW12 4AB, United Kingdom).· The catalyst particle size was given by the manufacturer. These data were inserted in the submitted manuscript.
Thanks for your guidance and I hope to cooperate with you in the near future.
Best Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have modified the manuscript properly. Now it seems more suitable for publication.
