Research on Coal Tar Pitch Catalytic Oxidation and Its Effect on the Emission of PAHs during Co-Carbonation with Coal
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I am sorry but I strongly feel that the article should be rewriten and improved.
The article requires major editing and style improvements. The sentences are very long and are overflooded with "and" e.g. the sentence (lines 198-204) goes on for 7 lines and if I counted correctly it has "and" used 6 times. On a side note, the same sentence is missing a fullstop.
The tenses are mixed up e.g. lines 151-161, "Take 1g of coal... (particle size 3-6mm, soaked...)".
There's a redundancy problem e.g.:
- line 169 "centrifuged in a centrifuge". The action already indicates the apparatus.
- lines 190-192 "...AlCl3 accelerates the process... and speeds up the oxidation..."
- lines 332-333 "Table 8 shows..., from the data in Table 8, it can be seen..."
There are multiple linguistic errors e.g.:
- grammar (lines 42-47)
- incorrect use of "and" ( line 33)
- mixed up singular and plural forms (line 89 "PAHs, as an organic pollutant, are...)
- "By FTIR spectroscopy, the oxygen content in CTP increased..." (line 372) - FTIR is a detection method. The quoted part of the sentence in the "Conclusions" would suggest otherwise.
- other errors e.g. line 92 "The detection means about PAHs...", lines 60-61 "Asphalt aging decreases the... and has lower thermal sensitivity and ductility" ( if "decreases" than "and lowers"), line 278 "(002) peaks are presented in graphite, coke and coal...".
Please note the above are only some of the errors. After rewriting the article should be proofed by a native speaker.
There is no statistical analysis, not even standard deviations of any results shown. If no repetitions were done for the analyses than the Authors findings are not reliable.
The equations are stoichiometrically incorrect e.g. line 109.
The reaction process schemes are flawed e.g.
- line 312 (Where's the other hydrogen? Radical missing, among other issues.)
- line 314-15 (That's not the correct F-C mechanism. In addition, is that a 5 valence aromatic carbon?)
Finally the abbreviations used in Table 1 aren't explained. While I agree they are commonly used (e.g. FC = Fixed Carbon and so on) some readers might not be familiar with them.
You have my regards.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript entitled “Research on coal tar pitch catalytic oxidation and its effect on 2 the emission of PAHs during co-carbonation with coal” is somewhat difficult to read and follow, presents abbreviations which are not explained (e.g., V, TI and CV, and others in tables 1 and 2, etc.) and requires serious improvements in the English and scientific languages. Experimental error ranges of order are missing.
Overall, I feed that the manuscript does not meet the standards of the journal Catalysts.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In this paper, the authors report the effect of oxidation of coal tar pitch (CTP) on its structure, together with the impact of the co-carbonization of coal tar pitch and coal on the emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The topic is of high interest and the methodology is well developed. Nevertheless, the analysis and discussion of the results should be improved in order to publish this paper in Catalysts.
- Acronyms must be explained the first time they are used in the text.
- Table 1 should be cited in the manuscript and explained.
- There is a duplicity in the data presented in Table 3 and Figures 1 and 2. In addition, there is no reference to these data in the manuscript. If authors include a more detailed explanation of the numbers and trends, the quality of the manuscript will improve, and it will be clearer.
- In Table 5, the authors include the parameters obtained from XRD data, however, they are not cited or explained in the manuscript. An explanation of these data including a comparison with the literature would be recommended.
- Why have they included the catalytic mechanism? Is it obtained from bibliography or from experimental data? This aspect should be clarified. Furthermore, the stoichiometry should be reviewed since in some occasions it does not close the balance and, in addition, some lines and images are superimposed and they must be improved.
- The paragraph beginning on line 332 is not clearly understood and should be revised.
- Figures 5 and 6 and Tables 6 and 7 are not cited along the manuscript. They must be described in greater depth and the information obtained must be more detailed so that it is easier to understand.
- It seems that data represented in Figures 7 are the same than Fig. 6 but in percentage, which did not provide a relevant additional information and it could be included as numbers along the discussion in the manuscript. What are the units of the Y axis in Fig 6?
- Few typos should also be corrected in the manuscript (i.e. line 204, the point is missing, line 285 “bread peak”, line 371 were increased, line 378 The XRD…).
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The comment in the file
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have tried to improve their work. There are some few details to which I would like to call their attention:
Line 239 – Please check the minus (-) symbol on AlCl3.
Line 240 – the + should be on the C atom (not H).
If possible, please include as Supplementary Material a description of the methods GB/T2001-2013, GB/T 2292-2018, and GB/T 8727-2008. Alternatively, the authors may give a reference for each method, if those references describe the details and are accessible to the readers.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
