Performance Evaluation of Compost of Windrow Turner Machine Using Agriculture Waste Materials

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has fully considered my suggestions and made revisions. After the revision, the quality of the paper has greatly improved. I think the current version can be accepted.

Author Response

Reviewer Response

Sustainability- 3084820: Performance Evaluation of Compost of Windrow Turner Machine Using Agriculture Waste Materials

The overall manuscript has been revised and the previous reviewer’s comments are also addressed as below:

 Reviewer-1:

Comments: he author has fully considered my suggestions and made revisions. After the revision, the quality of the paper has greatly improved. I think the current version can be accepted.

Respons-1:

Thanks for the provided comments and accept our paper.

 

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript needs very substantial rewrite to become understandable but will not meet any standard that I believe is worthy of your publication, Sustainability. I agree with their goals they are trying to achieve. Even with a rewrite of the presented material, it is not breaking any new ground for composting. I was hoping for more substantial revision of document. I think the paper is best for a more limited audience.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Needs major English editing.

Author Response

Reviewer Response

Sustainability- 3084820: Performance Evaluation of Compost of Windrow Turner Machine Using Agriculture Waste Materials

The overall manuscript has been revised and the previous reviewer’s comments are also addressed as below:

Reviewer 2

Comments:

This manuscript needs very substantial rewrite to become understandable but will not meet any standard that I believe is worthy of your publication, Sustainability. I agree with their goals they are trying to achieve. Even with a rewrite of the presented material, it is not breaking any new ground for composting. I was hoping for more substantial revision of document. I think the paper is best for a more limited audience.

Respons-2-1: Thanks for the comments, the overall manuscript is revised according to said comments.

 

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript investigated performance evaluation of compost of windrow turner machine using agriculture waste materials. Overall, the study provides some useful insights, but the manuscript needs major revision before final acceptance. Points that can be considered are the following:

1. The abstract and conclusion are too long and need to be refined.

2. Many tables and figures, such as Table 3 and Figure 9, provide the same results. Therefore you can choose one format to display the results.

3. The findings in sections 3.2 and 3.3 should be discussed with relevant references.

4. Please check the formatting problem carefully. The sentence (Line 136) was presented in a separate paragraph. Also, the figures 3 and 11 are not fully displayed.

5. Provides information about the ratio of organic waste in composting piles.

6. How about the repeatability of fermentation parameters, such as CEC, temperature, and electrical conductivity? It is a common problem that sampling is not uniform in a composting pile. Therefore, triple- or double-sampling is necessary.

7. Line 254: Table 5 does not show the concentration of micronutrients; please recheck it.

 

8. Some cited references are too old, please replace them with papers published in the last five years.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Reviewer Response

Sustainability- 3084820: Performance Evaluation of Compost of Windrow Turner Machine Using Agriculture Waste Materials

The overall manuscript has been revised and the previous reviewer’s comments are also addressed as below:

Reviewer 3

Comments: This manuscript investigated performance evaluation of compost of windrow turner machine using agriculture waste materials. Overall, the study provides some useful insights, but the manuscript needs major revision before final acceptance. Points that can be considered are the following:

1. The abstract and conclusion are too long and need to be refined.

Respons-3-1: The abstract and conclusion parts are refined and concise accordingly.

2. Many tables and figures, such as Table 3 and Figure 9, provide the same results. Therefore you can choose one format to display the results.

Respons-3-2: The overall manuscript was recheck and removed the figures that were presented the data of the tables.

3. The findings in sections 3.2 and 3.3 should be discussed with relevant references.

Respons-3-3: The said sections were revised and cited with new references

4. Please check the formatting problem carefully. The sentence (Line 136) was presented in a separate paragraph. Also, the figures 3 and 11 are not fully displayed.

Respons-3-4: The formatting problem is resolved and figures are adjusted to display clearly.

5. Provides information about the ratio of organic waste in composting piles.

Respons-3-5: This paper presents C:N and some other parameters. Organic waste is not an understandable word to address for this manuscript. 

6. How about the repeatability of fermentation parameters, such as CEC, temperature, and electrical conductivity? It is a common problem that sampling is not uniform in a composting pile. Therefore, triple- or double-sampling is necessary.

Respons-3-6: The overall experiment was conducted for 56 days and the fermentation process was observed with the turning of the material. In the start, the process was very slow and enhanced with the time after 15 days. The overall compost is uniform with the turning of the machine and five samples were checked from both piles.  

7. Line 254: Table 5 does not show the concentration of micronutrients; please recheck it.

Respons-3-7: Thanks for highlighting the point, the micronutrient is presented in Figure 09.

8. Some cited references are too old, please replace them with papers published in the last five years.

Respons-3-8: The references are updated accordingly.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accept in present form

Author Response

The overall manuscript has been revised and the previous reviewer’s comments are also addressed

Comments-1: 1. Suggest statistical analysis of data with t-test to show whether the data between two compost files are statistically different or not. Accordingly, update methodology, result, conclusion and abstract

Respons-1:

Thanks for the comments and guidance to analyses the data. The statistical analysis was conducted to determine if there is a significant difference in the temperature data between two compost piles. First, the normality of the data was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test. The results indicated that the temperature data for both Compost Pile 1 (p = 0.886) and Compost Pile 2 (p = 0.249) are approximately normally distributed, as the p-values were greater than the significance level of 0.05. Following this, Levene's test for homogeneity of variances was performed to evaluate whether the variances of the two groups were equal. The p-value from Levene's test (p = 0.434) suggested that the variances between the two compost piles are indeed equal. An independent t-test was conducted as per set assumptions to compare the mean temperatures of the two com-post piles. The results revealed a statistically significant difference between the two groups (t = -2.727, p = 0.011), indicating that the temperatures in Compost Pile 1 and Compost Pile 2 are not the same. This difference might be attributed to variations in compost composition, microbial activity, or other environmental factors affecting the piles.

A statistical analysis was conducted to compare the Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC), Electrical Conductivity (EC), and Carbon Nitrogen ratio (CN) between Pile 1 and Pile 2. The standard deviation for CEC in Pile 1 was 18.22, much higher than the 5.17 in Pile 2, indicating greater variability in Pile 1. The t-test for CEC showed a statistically significant difference between the two piles (t = 2.31, p = 0.049). For EC, the standard deviations were 3.77 for Pile 1 and 2.36 for Pile 2, but the t-test revealed no significant difference (t = 0.96, p = 0.365). Similarly, the CN ratio had standard deviations of 6.47 for Pile 1 and 5.10 for Pile 2, with the t-test indicating no significant difference (t = -0.77, p = 0.464). These results suggest that while CEC differs significantly between the piles, the EC and CN ratios do not show statistically significant differences.

Comments-2: Suggest presenting each data with standard deviation to show the variations among the replications

Respons-2: Thanks for comment, the standard deviation of the data was calculated and the value added in each table.

Comments-3: Yield data should be presented in result section not in methodology section

Respons-3: Thanks for comment and suggestion, the data is presenting in results and discussion section.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

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

see file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Needs major English editting. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

-The introduction fails to guide the reader towards the objectives or hypotheses of the proposed work. Additionally, the Materials and Methods (M&M) section contains an excessive amount of unnecessary details that are not pertinent to the study objectives, which are not clearly defined in the introduction. 

-The experimental design is not described. There are no repetitions of the treatments, so there is no statistical analysis of the data.

- Figures and tables are presented without proper referencing in the text (e.g., Fig 1-7, Table 1).

-While the results appear intriguing, the absence of an adequate experimental design that incorporates statistical analysis undermines the evaluation of these findings.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Evaulation of composts using CEC, electrical conductivity and temperature are not sufficient. Stating that the compost quality and maturity is good based only on CEC value is totally unscientific. There is a need to include other parameters as well (oxygen uptake rate, self-heating tests, C/N ratio, plant germination etc.).  

Comments on the Quality of English Language

minor editing of English required (windrow and not window etc.)

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In the study, the authors explored the Performance of Compost of Agriculture Waste Materials using Windrow Turner Machine. The research results are interesting and provide valuable information for the utilization of organic waste. Therefore, I suggest to accept it after minor revision. 

1.     In 14-15, I suggest deleting " Composting is an excellent method to increase soil organic matter content " because it is not closely related to the research topic.

2.     In line 22-29, The author only provided research results and lacked conclusions.

3.     In Introduction, I suggest the author use a three-paragraph format. The first paragraph briefly describes the research background, the second paragraph can elaborate on the current research progress and problems faced in composting, and the third paragraph outlines the methods and significance of this study.

4.     In line 108, spaces should be kept between numbers and units.

5.     All the author's data is missing error bars. If possible, please provide them.

6.     In Conclusion, please try to avoid displaying too many results. A summary conclusion should be written in this section.