Applicability of Paper and Pulp Industry Waste for Manufacturing Mycelium-Based Materials for Thermoacoustic Insulation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First of all, I would like to thank you very much for choosing our journal for your article. It is a very successful and meticulously prepared article. If you answer the questions I have asked, I would like to read the article again.

- Can you provide more detailed information on the environmental conditions (e.g., humidity and temperature) during the storage of PPMS to ensure reproducibility?

- What is the justification for using Malt Extract Agar (Merck) for the solid agar medium? Were other mediums considered?

- What was the rationale behind selecting the specific conditions (e.g., 105 °C for 24 hours) for drying the sludge?

- Why was Trametes versicolor chosen as the fungal species for inoculation? Were other fungi considered?

- Were there any controls used during the mycelium cultivation process to ensure consistent growth and development?

- How were the radial growth measurements standardized, and what tools or techniques were used to ensure accuracy?

- What were the specific conditions (e.g., temperature, time) used for the drying process in the convection oven?

- Can you provide more information on the calibration and validation of the KD-2 PRO thermal analyzer and the acoustic impedance measurement setup?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled “Applicability of Paper and Pulp Industry Waste for Manufacturing Mycelium-Based Materials for Thermal-Acoustic Insulation” by Muñoz, H.; et al. is a scientific work where the authors designed a strategy to reuse the sludge formed during the pulp & paper manufacturing process being exposed to mycelum of the fungus Trametes versicolor. The composite material was fully characterized by different complementary techniques. This could pave the way to produce more suistanable and green friendly materials to minimize the use of scarced fossil-fuel derivatives. This is a topic of growing interest. However, it exists some points that need to be addressed (please, see them below detailed point-by-point) to improve the scientific quality of the submitted manuscript paper before this article will be consider for its publication in Sustainability.

1) Abstract. The authors should merge this section in one single paragraph.

 

2) The authors should consider to add the term “Pulp & Paper Industry” in the keyword list.

 

3) “Expanded polystyrene (EPS) (…) 2.2 million tons of polysterene produced in the United States only 20,000 tons were recycling (…) human health” (lines 34-41). Could the authors provide quantitative insights about the worldwide economic impact of this Industry sector? This will aid the potential readers to better understand the significance of this devoted research and the necessity to develop green and sustainable alternatives.

 

4) “The addition of nano and micro cellulose (…) enhance mechanical properties (...) biomaterials” (lines 72-73). Here, even if I agree with this statement provided by the authors it should be necessary to mention that not only the mechanical properties are improved, but also the interfacial adhesion properties of nano [1] and microcellulose [2] due to the existence of hydroxyl groups exhibited at the most external surface of these plant polymers.

[1] Bhagavathi, L.R.; Deshpande, A.P.; Ram, G.D.J.; Panigrahí, S.K. Effect of cellulosic fillers addition on curing and adhesion strength of moisture-curing one-component polyurethane adhesives. Int. J. Adhes. Adhes. 2021, 108, 102871. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijadhadh.2021.102871.

[2] Marcuello, C.; Foulon, L.; Chabbert, B.; Molinari, M.; Aguié-Béghin, V. Langmuir-Blodgett Procedure to Precisely Control the Coverage of Functionalized AFM Cantilevers for SMFS Measurements: Application with Cellulose Nanocrystals. Langmuir 2018, 34, 9376-9386. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b01892.

 

5) Table 1 (line 97). Please, the authors should exchange the “commas” by “points” in the numerical data displayed in this Table. This comment should be taken into account for the rest of the main manuscript body text.

 

6) “Characterization of MBM” (lines 181-191). What was the settled electron voltage to gather the SEM images? And the relative settings employed for the FTIR measurements? Finally, the authors should specify the employed software tools to process the raw data obtained by the different techniques.

 

7) Figure 3 (line 219). The Table data is slightly blurry. Maybe this problem comes from the PDF conversion step. The authors should contact to the Assistant Editor to fix this issue.

 

8) “3.2. Physic-chemical analysis of biomaterials” (lines 242-294). Did the authors observe microcracks in the SEM images? In case affirmative, some hypothesis should be furnished in this regard.

 

9) “Conclusions” (lines 350-358). This section perfectly remarks the most relevant outcomes found by the authors in this work and the promising future perspectives. It should be desirable to add a brief statement to discuss about the potential future action lines to pursue the topic covered in this research.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

-         The authors studied using paper sludge from the pulp and paper industry as a substrate for manufacturing mycelium-based biomaterials using the white rot fungus Trametes versicolor. The prepared materials were tested to reduce noise and for sound absorption. Thermal conductivity was studied too.

-         The topic is interesting but several corrections/clarifications are needed. I recommend publication after taking the following into consideration:

-         Some typing corrections are needed, for example in line 61: “ Therefore, white rot fungi can colonize a substrate based on the hyphae. bind “

-         In Table 1, for what kind of paper sludge are the analyses in the table? How cellulose could be 8%?!

-         In the Experimental, what is the kind of paper sludge used? from kraft paper mills or recycled paper or....?

-         In Table 2, how the organic material in the sludge is about 11.5% and the ash is about 1.4%?? This doesn’t make sense.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 

-               Some typing corrections are needed, for example in line 61: “ Therefore, white rot fungi can colonize a substrate based on the hyphae. bind “

-        

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Necessary corrections have been made. Therefore, this study can be accepted.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors appropriately clarified/responded to the reviewers' comments.