Performance Evaluation of Solar Still in Veracruz, Mexico Gulf Coastline

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article has an interested subject to make a pure water for drinking through solar still in tropical country and the average yield of distilled water was evaluated by modelling.

There is a minor to be corrected (line 181 : = 0.054 m2 -->0.054 m² ).

 

Author Response

Suggestion from Reviewer 1 was accepted. m2 was changed to m²

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript on the topic “ Performance Evaluation of Solar Still in Veracruz, Mexico Gulf  Coastline” is an interest to the reader and within the scope of the journal.

Still, I feel the manuscript needs revision. Concerns and suggestion related to this manuscript are provided below for the author's attention.

1. Recheck this sentence carefully “Population growth, rapid industrialization, and fast growth of the agricultural sector have led to intensive and inefficient water use, and contamination of water resources, becoming less and less available”
2. The manuscript is very poorly written with most of the sentences in many places are very hard to understand. The language standard of this manuscript is very poor, which is really difficult to understand.
3. The author needs to take the help of the MDPI English editing service in order to improve the quality of the language and make the script readable.
4. The rationale behind the work is not clear.
5. To obtain experimental data, field trials were conducted in La Guadalupe, 121 Tecolutla-Veracruz, Mexico. The site coordinates are 0º22'26” N and 97º4'55” W. These location coordinates need to be provided on the world map.
6. Figure 1. Average annual climatic behavior in Tecolutla, Mexico. (a) Solar Radiation, (b) Relative Humidity, (c) Ambient Temperature, and (d) Cloudiness. The figures show the monthly average 146 behavior of each parameter and indicate their respective values per month. Kindly add the error bar.
7. On page 4 author have mention “Therefore, due to its climatic conditions, the Tecolutla region in Mexico has great potential to use solar still as a brackish water desalination system”. Justify this sentence.
8. Results and discussion need more in-depth discussion with proper justification in many places.
9. The significance of the Dunkle model needs more discussion.
10. Kindly improve the quality of all the graphs.
11. A conclusion should be properly revised.

Author Response

Response 1: The Reviewer's suggestion is accepted and text adjusted as follows (Lines 24-26):

“Population growth, industrialization, and fast growth of the agricultural sector have led to intensive water use and contamination of water resources, becoming less and less available”.

Response 2: The reviewer's suggestion is accepted and the entire text will be revised.

Response 3: The manuscript will be submitted for review by a native English speaker for the respective linguistic corrections.

Response 4: In lines 90 – 94, the objective of this work is clearly described:

“The main objective of this research study is to verify the performance of a solar still under the climatic conditions from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in addition to finding out the design’s influence and operation parameters in freshwater abstraction. Similarly, the effectiveness of a mathematical model and the associated kinetic coefficients were verified, which allows simulating real-field conditions”.

Response 5: The original text was misspelled. Fixed as follows (Line 121):

“The site coordinates are 20º22’26” N and 97º4’55” W.”

Response 6: The reviewer’s suggestion was accepted. The graphs were modified and the standard error bar was included in each figure.

Response 7: The reviewer's suggestion was accepted. The text was rewritten (Lines 149-154): 

“Climatic factors such as solar radiation intensity, wind speed, ambient temperature, relative humidity, and cloudiness directly influence the solar distillation productivity [16], and, considering that the region of Tecolutla in Mexico receives high solar radiation and presents conditions of relative humidity, ambient temperature, and cloudiness favorable to evaporation-condensation processes, these conditions allow to implement the use of solar stills as a brackish water desalination system.”

Response 8: The reviewer's suggestion was accepted.

Response 9: The reviewer's suggestion was accepted. The following text was added (Lines 197-202):

“For the solar still used in the tests, the mathematical model proposed was based on the original model from Dunkle [19]. Dunkle's model is important since it clearly defines the coefficients of heat transfer by convection and evaporation, based on physical parameters that occur inside the solar still (water and glass temperature). This model has also been widely used by other authors such as Jamil et al., (2021) [25]; Duffie and Beckman, (2013) [26] and Antar et al., (2010) [27], who reported good simulation results."

Response 10: The reviewer's suggestion was accepted. However, some graphs could not be improved because they are the direct result of the statistical software used.

Response 11: The reviewer's suggestion was accepted. The conclusion was revised and the following text was added (Lines 662-664):

“Finally, Solar stills represent a viable alternative for the solution (on a small scale) of the freshwater deficit in vulnerable populations located in coastal areas, especially those in tropical and developing countries.”

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript by Jhon Jairo Feria‐Díaz et al reports “Performance Evaluation of Solar Still in Veracruz, Mexico Gulf Coastline”. This manuscript discusses desalination with solar as a simple, inexpensive, and accessible alternative to obtaining freshwater. The findings of the study were compared to experimental data using a mathematical model of single slope solar still given by Dunkle. Overall, this work is interesting. I recommend publishing this work. The manuscript has been written in a really good English language. The results are well presented and the originality is strong. Please check the format of the references.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. We accepted your suggestion to check the references and they were adjusted to the format requested by the Journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have satisfactorily revised the manuscript.