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Article
Peer-Review Record

Home Sweet Home: Setting the Best Thriving Conditions for the Ad Hoc Engineered Microbial Consortium in the Zero Mile System

Sustainability 2024, 16(6), 2227; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16062227
by Annamaria Alabiso 1,2, Sara Frasca 1,2, Matteo Bartolini 2, Roberta Congestri 2, Marco Maria D’Andrea 2, Giorgio Buratti 3, Fiammetta Costa 3, Matteo Meraviglia 3, Attilio Nebuloni 3 and Luciana Migliore 2,4,*
Reviewer 1:
Reviewer 2:
Reviewer 3: Anonymous
Sustainability 2024, 16(6), 2227; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16062227
Submission received: 2 December 2023 / Revised: 29 February 2024 / Accepted: 5 March 2024 / Published: 7 March 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Management of Urban Water Resources and Environment)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The objectives of this study were not clearly stated. Since the bioremediation activity of the engineered phototrophic/heterotrophic microbial consortium is concerned, it is necessary to provide evidences for water purification. Only the changes of bacterium consortium were monitored, nevertheless the changes of water quality were not characterized. Thus it is hard to tell the functions of the microbial consortium.

 The mechanism for recovering the water and/or nutrients from the dishwasher wastewaters could be presented more clearly, such as a diagram.

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Sustainability-2779381: Home sweet Home: Setting the best thriving conditions for the AD HOC engineered microbial consortium in the zero mile system

Line 33 – 34: Rephrase ‘The water demand problem and the consumption of water resources are a crucial environmental issue’ by ‘The water demand problem and the consumption of water resources are crucial environmental issues’

Line 38” Replace’ washwaters’ by ‘ wastewater’

Line 43: Replace ‘ to irrigating’ by ‘for irrigating’

Line 46: Replace ‘it is able to turn’ by ‘it can turn’

Line 48: Replace ‘ Environmental’ by ‘ environmentally’

Line 49: replace ‘have’ by ‘has’ and ‘washwaters’ by ‘wastewater’

Line 59 – 60: Rephrase ‘ The Jetsons’ Kitchen project is aimed at reusing and upcycling household grey waters, starting with DWW’ by ‘ The Jetsons’ Kitchen project aims to reuse and upcycle household grey waters, starting with DWW’

Line 62: replace ‘the cultivation of’ by ‘ cultivating’

Line 69: behavior not behaviour

Line 91: replace ‘constituted’ by ‘consisting’

Line 96 – 100: Rewrite’ On the other hand, the research through design approach, involving the development of demonstrators and prototypes [17], is useful to support the experiments on the microbial consortium and also to prefigurate application scenarios, ranging from the kitchen furniture to collective wastewater upcycling and gardening solutions’ to  ‘On the other hand, the research through a design approach involving the development of demonstrators and prototypes [17] is useful to support the microbial consortium experiments and prefigurate application scenarios, ranging from kitchen furniture to collective wastewater upcycling and gardening solutions’

Line 103: replace ‘dilution’ by ‘dilutions’

Line 143-146: Rewrite or rephrase the statement clearly, it isn’t very clear to understand.

Line 262: replace ‘makes easier its use, by ‘ makes its use easier’

 

 

 

 

 

Some questions

1.                              What was the nutrient composition of the culture medium used in the BG11o culture?

2.                              What was the initial pH of consortium?

3.                              In Fig.2, What happened to consortium surface growth under 130 light intensities between 14 and 21? It seems the growth was increasing.

4.                              In Fig. 3a, The capital and lowercase letters need to be clarified. There should be a better way of representing the figure. In Figs. 3 b and 3c, there is a difference in bacterial growth from the start to the 30 days, especially at pH 10. The author needs to give a better explanation.

5.                              Fig. 4c, What the T), T4…T30 represent? Is it Time?:  

6.                              In Figure 5, What are the IDWW_NGS, 2DWW_NGS, and 3DWW_NGS represent? Are these consortia from different dishwasher samples? Or from different wastewater dilutions?

7.                              The author should explain more about the bacterial diversity between the different phases ( IDWW_NGS, 2DWW_NGS, and 3DWW…). For instance, some of the bacteria dominating in 2DWW were reduced in 3DWW, others increased, and some new bacteria were even created. So, the reason must be clearly explained.

8.                              In Fig.6, the colors of the plots for 75% DWW and 10% DWW are confusing.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor edit is required

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Introduction: The introduction lacks even a brief description of wastewater from dishwashers, in particular with regard to the chemicals used in dishwashers.

Lines: 116-118, 143-146 and 279-282: Is it possible to specify the light source in more detail (mainly: natural/artificial light, type of radiator and color or wavelength)?

Lines 157-161 and 343-347: The use of a standard medium containing readily available sources of nutrients to evaluate the capability to face organic load may not be appropriate because in the case of many substances that are difficult to biodegrade, or in the presence of toxic substances that may be composition of wastewater, e.g. from dishwashers, the acceptable load on the consortium and the concentration of these substances may have a different impact than when using a nutrient solution.

Lines 275-283: Have you measured oxygen production or oxygen concentration?

Lines 531-546: The conclusions included in line 531 are not conclusions resulting directly from the research results presented in the paper.

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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