Design and Performance Analysis of a Small-Scale Prototype Water Condensing System for Biomass Combustion Flue Gas Abatement

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

No more comments

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for providing very contributory comments and suggestions and also for appreciating the revision effort done by the authors

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the improvements made and for resubmitting your work for consideration.

Many aspects and sections of the manuscript were improved. Most particularly, the structure, general flow and methodological descriptions.

However, the text still includes several unsupported claims and cannot be published as is. Finally, I would recommend the authors implement some of the future work to increase the scope of this work and thus enhance the scientific value of the paper.

Specific comments:

Abstract: the authors claim that the system reduces the concentration of PM. Although that is definitely likely, I could not see any data comparing PM before and after the tested system.

Line 106: Claims of PM and SOx removal. This should either be supported with other literature or omitted as determination to validate these claims was not carried out.

Lines 111-119: Repetitive section, remove.

Tables 3-5: Again, these tables should be split into key metrics (presented in the paper) and supplementary data. Also, the table inserted after Table 5 lacks numbering and a caption.

Conclusion: The text still claims that SOx was measured. Please remove.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Major improvements. Only minor issues were detected that do not cause any comprehension issues.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

the authors wuold like to thank you for Your precious comments and suggestions that have been applied to the paper.

In the following we provide a point to point answer to Your review report.

Kind regards,

Valentina Coccia, the corresponding authors

Review report

Thank you for the improvements made and for resubmitting your work for consideration.

Many aspects and sections of the manuscript were improved. Most particularly, the structure, general flow and methodological descriptions.

However, the text still includes several unsupported claims and cannot be published as is. Finally, I would recommend the authors implement some of the future work to increase the scope of this work and thus enhance the scientific value of the paper.

Specific comments:

Abstract: the authors claim that the system reduces the concentration of PM. Although that is definitely likely, I could not see any data comparing PM before and after the tested system.

Authors:

Claim removed. It is reasonable to expect that the condensing system is able to remove PM, but without experimental supporting data the authors agree with the reviewer to remove the sentence. The authors have planned to carry out this kind of measurement in their next upcoming work.

Line 106: Claims of PM and SOx removal. This should either be supported with other literature or omitted as determination to validate these claims was not carried out.

Authors:

The sentence has been removed

Lines 111-119: Repetitive section, remove.

Authors:

The section has been removed

Tables 3-5: Again, these tables should be split into key metrics (presented in the paper) and supplementary data. Also, the table inserted after Table 5 lacks numbering and a caption.

Authors:

The three tables have been replaced with only one table. However, they include all the monitored values since the authors think that publishing some supplementary data could produce the dispersion of the collected data

Conclusion: The text still claims that SOx was measured. Please remove.

Authors:

The sentence has been removed

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you, I look forward to reading about further progress with the system.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall this article is quite good and worthy of publication. it just needs some improvements to make this article perfect.
such as:
1. The discussion still needs to be added in more detail and compared with the results of previous research.

2. The discussion also includes standard quality, standart values, and permissible exhaust gas limits.

3. The conclusion is also written in the last paragraph of the abstract.

4. the experimental results and discussion show too much data and have not provided a detailed explanation of the data or table and also for the graph.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall the English used is quite good and the meaning can be understood.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Hello, thank you for submitting your project work for consideration. 

General comments:

The intro/lit review is too shallow - the authors do not discuss other attempts at achieving such flue gas emission limiting goals and do not compare the obtained results to any literature findings in the discussion section. The methodology is severely incomplete, not to mention that the entire discussion section relates to work that has not been previously described. Not all conclusions are supported by evidence. 

Many significant improvements are needed to bring this combination of what seem to be project results and/or report texts to the level required for manuscripts to be published. However, data collected at larger scales are always welcome in scientific literature. I would thus suggest the authors to work on improving the scope of the paper, structure and methodological descriptions and continue pursuing publication. Without these improvements, it is impossible to even review the manuscript adequately.

Specific comments:

Title - "atmospheric emissions" might not necessarily best reflect the scope of the work. Biomass combustion flue gases should be reflected somehow.

Lines 41-44: The authors should consider rewriting the sentence for clarity.

Abstract: The abstract is too long. The authors should condense the text a bit so that it showcases only the key highlights of the paper.

Lines 81-84: It seems (next paragraph) that the system also reduces some gaseous emissions. It remains unclear whether this was part of the objectives of the technology or a positive unintended side effect?

Lines 129-130: Are the combustion plant components standard and commercially manufactured? If so, the authors should specify the manufacturer, model, key specifications, etc.

Line 142: goes -> go

Figure 3: Please translate all text to English in the schematic.

Line 191: [13] No need to refer to a producers website here as long as the pump manufacturer, model and capacity (kW) is defined.

Line 94: [14] No need to refer to a producers website here as long as the pump manufacturer, model and capacity (kW) is defined.

Line 201: Please define average ambient temperatures during operation.

Line 240: [15] No need to refer to a producers website here as long as the pump manufacturer, model and capacity (kW) is defined.

Section 2.5: Missing section 2.5.2 on measurements in the condensation plant. This is critical! E.g., how were the flue gas compositions assessed (incl. calibration methodology), etc.

Additionally, why SOx or higher Mw compounds were not measured? How were reductions in PM quantified?

Arguably, the most significant part of the methodology is missing.

Table 1: Were these analyses carried out in replicate? Can errors/deviations be reported to define precision?

Also, how was the sampling done?

Table 2: Same as above.

Tables 3-5: Please add row borders to improve readability. 

I suggest creating a larger table encompassing data from all three runs side-by-side (landscape) and potentially having it as supplemental material. Instead, key findings could be written in the text, with a high-level overview table showing average values of the key parameters.

The condensation plant should also be defined in therms of its capacity in kW.

Lines 280-821: Was the condensate analysed for it's composition?

Line 284: What predictive calculations? There was no mention of this until now.

Lines 289-292: No idea what this relates to. Modeling was not part of the intro or methodology.

Section 4: This is not a discussion, rather results of some other work that, until here, were not part of this manuscript. Very confusing. 

Lines 337-338: There is no data on measured SOx.