Remediation of River Water Contaminated with Whey Using Horizontal Subsurface Flow Constructed Wetlands with Ornamental Plants in a Tropical Environment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper entitled "Remediation of river water contaminated with whey using horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetlands with ornamental plants in a tropical environment" falls within the journal scope. The study is a very important exploration and has a strong guiding significance. Comments are given as follows:

1-     The research is valuable, but the writing needs a lot of revision.

2-     Line 87-88: the citation format should be corrected. “According to Licata et al. (2021) [8]”.

3-     Line 33-34: There are mixtures of capital and small letters in the “keyword section”. Kindly correct it.

4-     The article should be restructured in a way that clearly conveys the overall objective of the research. The goals should be restructured into general and specific objectives. In my opinion, authors should add new idea to this type of studies. The novelty and potential impact of this paper should be highlighted more.  

5-     Authors tried to present the structure of the article at the end of the introduction. However, it is not well structured. Kindly improve on that. The novelty of the work alongside the objectives should be highlighted more in the last paragraph of the introduction section. Presently, it is too shallow.

6-     It could be observed that there are too many abbreviations in the Abstract. Kindly reduce them. As there are so many abbreviations throughout the manuscript, it is suggested to include a section for “List of abbreviations”. This would guide readers. Kindly ensure that all abbreviations are detailed at first appearance.

7-     Most paragraphs in the entire manuscript are either too lengthy or too short, especially in the introduction. Kindly consider at least 4 and at most 9 sentences in each paragraph. It is suggested to revise all through the manuscript.

8-     In Table 1, authors should add a column and state the standard discharge limit for each parameter.

9-     Figure 1: Kindly increase the resolution of the figure. The figure looks pale.

10-   Figure 3: What is the significance of putting two figures? If they are not saying the same thing, then, they should be labelled “a” and “b”. The figure should be more comprehensive and in line with the description provided in the discussion.

11-   The paper needs more effort in displaying the methodology as the applied is not so innovative. It lacks information of different indices used in this research. This section should be re-organized and systematized. Pay attention to the technical details required to describe the experimental procedures.

12-   Still on the methodology, has optimization been carried out in the experiment? If “Yes”, kindly highlight the optimized conditions either in a Table or paragraph for better readability. If “No”, why the optimization was not carried out.

13-   The study is rich. However, it is surprising that no optimisation was adopted using any of RSM, Uniform Design, Taguchi, or ANN?

14-   Discussion of results is weak. It is suggested to compare the results of the present study with some similar studies. More explanations and interpretations must be added for the results.

15-   More intensely compare your findings with existing literature. A comparison Table is expected between this work and other earlier related published works tabulating the latest works done in this domain to more effectively highlight the novelty of the present work. More explanations and interpretations must be added for the results.

16-   The references are not enough to justify the work done in the manuscript. Kindly refer to the earlier suggested articles to enrich the manuscript.

17-   Reduce the word count of the conclusions. The conclusion lacks some basic components. It must be re-written in a well-structured manner. It is suggested to re-organize the conclusion section much better to cover a summary of the problem(s), objectives methodology, findings, and recommendation(s).

The manuscript requires proof reading and improvement, as there are some linguistic, typographical and coherence issues.

Moderate English correction required

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you for your observations and comments. I am sending the responses to your comments as an attached file.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The remediation of river water contaminated with whey using horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetlands with ornamental plants in a tropical environment is shown in this paper.

This work discusses an important topic regarding wastewater treatment from the food industry. Wastewater of plant origin can be used, for example, as fertilizer. But the disposal of wastewater of animal origin is a big challenge. For this reason, any attempt to utilize wastewater from the animal food industry is worthy of attention. Especially if it is ecological disposal based on the use of plants.

The research covered a treatment system for river water polluted with dairy wastewater over a study. Measurements were carried out for 136 days. The aim of this research was to evaluate the removal efficiency of contaminants in a pilot-scale horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland. Two types of plants were used in the study: Hippeastrum spp. and Heliconia spp. A 60-day adaptation period for plants was proposed. Which is a fair assumption. As noted in this paper the use of horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetlands has proven to be an efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly alternative for treating wastewater generated by the dairy agroindustry. In this study was observed that Heliconia spp. demonstrated higher efficiency in reducing the pollutant load compared to Hippeastrum spp. The study noted that it would be important to include a filtration system at the beginning of the horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland system, which would help retain particulates and suspended organic substances, thereby improving the quality of the treated wastewater.

The work is well described.

The measurement results were presented clearly.

The content of the work, measurement results and conclusions are clear to readers.

The references was good choosen to topic of research.

Good work!

 

In my opinion, the conclusions are slightly too broadly described. I would suggest moving part of the description from the Conclusions chapter to the discussion part. Apart from this suggestion, I believe that the work can be published in its current form.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you for your observations and comments. I am sending the responses to your comments as an attached file.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have significantly improved the revised version of the manuscript