Carbon Emission Accounting Model of Three-Stage Mechanical Products for Manufacturing Process
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis work describes a new algorithm for accounting carbon emission as a three stage mechanical products in the manufacturing process. The authors claim the novelty lies in the exact carbon emission quantities, which is omited in previous researches. Indeed, I do find this work provides a thorough and comprehensive analysis of their algorithm of carbon accounting. And their example on ball valve is also vivid. My comments are as follows
1. Page 1, in the first paragraph, the reference 1 and 2 are outdated. The authors should provide timely data for their claim.
2. Page 2, the authors introduce lots of previous work, yet fail to present a clear logic flow, which makes me finding these texts redundant.
3. Page 14, where do the authors get the carbon data for the ball valve. Personally, I think the data source is the most important element in carbon accouting. After all, one can come up various algorithms for carbon accounting.
4. Can the authors comment on the differences among their method and other classics previous methods? Otherwise, how can the readers recognize the advantage of the claimed method in this work?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsStructure
1. It is recommended to add a nomenclature to the beginning of the manuscript to describe all the parameters and variables alphabetically.
2. There are some long sentences in the manuscript. One example is the sentence presented in line 24 which ends in line 28. Another example is the sentence started in line 119 which ends in line 124.
3. Please revise the manuscript to assure all the abbreviations are expanded at their appearance in the body of the text. For example, LCA is not expanded at the first appearance.
4. Please add a paragraph to the end of the Introduction Section to describe the structure of the paper.
5. in line 144, it is mentioned “ … mechanical product parts … “ it seems that it can be replaced with “mechanical products” or “mechanical parts”
6. It is highly recommended to avoid using “so on” in the manuscript. Please replace it with other word choices: e.g., such as.
7. Line 207 should start with (2) not (3)
Content
1. Please revise the Abstract to describe the findings, conclusions, and future research directions.
2. The Conclusion Section can be revised to include more future research directions.
3. The gap in the literature has been clearly described in the manuscript. However, it has not been supported completely by a comprehensive/systematic literature review. Currently, the manuscript includes 25 references. Thus, it is highly recommended to expand the literature review to support the research objective better. One way to do so is to dedicate an individual section to the literature review after the Introduction Section.
4. parameters in equation 3 are not fully described.
Figures and Tables:
1. Please revise Figures 7, 8, and 9 to make them readable and understandable in the grey-scale printing. One way can be using patterns instead of colors in the Figures.
2. Please revise the font type in the figures to make them compatible with the body of the text.
3. Please add space after the tables to make it easier for the reader to differentiate between the text and the tables.
4. Caption of Table 3 and the table itself are split into two pages. Please consider this comment for all the tables and figures.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguagePlease review the comments to address the English-related concerns.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper looks at carbon accounting during manufacturing using the life-cycle assessment methodology, after e.g. Sun et al.
The paper looks very interesting, and addresses an important problem in sustainability that will be of interest to the readers of the journal. My comments are as follows:
The paragraph beginning line 115 "The research findings from the three categories mentioned above..." needs to be a bit clearer. Explaining the limitations of the previous studies is very important, and though the lit. rev. is very good, a shorter literature review with a longer identification of the "research gaps" would be more useful to help assess the need for your methods.
2) Try to use no underscores in the notation, like $CE_P-H_P-\text{material}$ Use first letter abbreviations like $V_{i}$, and include a table of notations. No need for dots either, just write the terms adjacent to each other (as us typical with algebra). Brackets can be used to highlight multiplication.
3) The paper is a bit long, perhaps it could be shortened?
4) Just a revision should be ok, at the authors discretion how to improve the presentation e.g. some figures so there is no text overlap with the graphical parts, where possible.
Given this paper presents a new method, the results are not particularly controversial, so it is up to the editor whether to publish, since I do not have any serious concerns with the scientific content.
5) Improve a bit the clarity of the English in the paper, as some sentences are a bit hard to understand. Perhaps also include a section summarizing the contribution and results after the introduction, of about 500 words.
Thank you.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
A good read over and editing should be sufficient to improve the clarity of expression.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAll my concerns have been addressed.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for your time and efforts in addressing the comments.
