Holistic Case Study on the Explosion of Ammonium Nitrate in Tianjin Port
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have done a very impressible work but i will request them to please modify the abstract and put the Introduction title in the manuscript. The conclusion seems to be very lengthy which can be modified and crux could be presented.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents a detailed report about the Tianjin explosion in 2015. Till this day, I reviewed papers with some new scientific content, so in this review I try to approach to this manuscript as a scientific paper. For me, the English of the paper should be improved and also the edit of the manuscript. I think your work is valuable, however, I have some concerns:
- In Figure 1a and 1b the cars on the road around the site are the same. I do not know, how can this possible. Based on the title of this figure, both of them have been taken by a satellite. In Figure 2 and 3 the text in the legend should be larger.
- The values and their units should be separated with a space, and before the reference number in the text you should also put a space. Please also check the units, e.g. on page 10, in line 7.
- About the references: only 10 references published after 2015 from the 47 referred work, it should be increased to show the readers that your work is up-to-date. After just a flash search I found these three works which are not referred in this work:
- https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/365615
- Beirut ammonium nitrate explosion: Are not we really learning anything? Hans J. Pasman, Charline Fouchier, Sunhwa Park, Noor Quddus, Delphine Laboureur
- Lorenz R. Boeck, Patrick W. Mahan, Loss prevention learnings from Beirut and similar ammonium nitrate explosions, Process Safety Progress, 10.1002/prs.12322.
However, it is not a good way to lengthen your reference list, to put 3-4 references at the end of a sentence. I suggest to the authors to decrease this number to at most 2 and make clear what is the difference between these references, what is the purpose you make a reference to it in your work. And one more thing “in the published journal” is not a usual way referring to somebody work. As I see section 3.4 can be moved to the literature review/introduction part of this work and Table 7 can also contain the Beirut explosion, which has similar time delay between the two explosions, than in the investigated case.
- The 1. and 1.1 sections are missing. The numbering of sections is started with 1.2. It is not favorable that the two or three section titles are following each other without any text between them. The 2.4.4 section is also missing, please check the whole document!
- Please explain in section 2.4 why these three methodologies have been used in your work to determine the shock wave blast effects.
- In Table 2 the mTNT column can be look better e.g. with giving the range of the mass with number of the experiments were performed. Table 4 can be extended with the measured Δp, which can be seen in Figure 3 with markers.
- As I think, the temperature in the containers is continuously increased as just a small portion of the reactants react since the reaction is exothermic. I cannot understand what do you mean this: “The results revealed that the containers containing NC accumulated heat continually for nine days at 60 ℃ until the ignition of NC.” How can the heat accumulated without a temperature increase in the investigated material system?
If I am right, that means an isothermal measurement of time-of-maximum-rate is over predicted the real time requirement which is crucial in a safety critical analysis. I think an adiabatic measurement can give a shorter time-of-maximum-rate. I have another problem with the isothermal analysis is that the ambient temperature around the container is changing on hourly basis. Hence, the maximal 60 °C (it is not clear that this is a maximal or a daily average temperature, on 19-20. pages you refer to this temperature in both ways) in the container can be noticed only a short period of the day, so the predicted 60 days is much longer in reality.
- Where is the measurement/calculation for this: “NC is determined be ignited after about 9 days by autocatalytic decomposition in a container sustained at 60℃.”? In the main text there is another sentence can be found connected to this: “According to this, a time-to-maximum-rate with the value of 12,400 minutes or 8.6 days was determined at 60 °C in Figure 8.”. I cannot find out how you got this value.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have revised the manuscript properly and may check any mistake like spelling and font during final checkups.
Reviewer 2 Report
Accepted
Reviewer 3 Report
First of all, thank you for the answers and explanations. I think the revised manuscript after the review reaches the required level for publication from scientific point of view. All my concerns are answered in the revised manuscript, only a carefully English proofreading and text editing should be made as I see.
