Energy-Saving Design and Energy Consumption Analysis of a New Vacuum Refrigerator

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The provided suggestions have been properly addressed and the new version of the manuscript has achieved a higher scientific quality.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The device presented in the article is an interesting solution that is worth discussing due to the possibilities of reducing energy consumption. 

However, the presentation of the calculation methods and the discussion of the results and conclusions require significant improvement. The presentation of this device and simulation results should be more scientific than technical. 

The article contains basic errors that exclude the credibility of the adopted calculation methods (e.g. formula 1 and its description, a description of the factors shown in colour in the diagrams and the data adopted for the simulation - lines 271 and 297-299). 

The introduction needs to be significantly expanded and should explain the need for similar solutions in more detail.  It contains numerous editing and linguistic errors ( (e.g., lines 23-24).

In row 226 it is written "From above Figures 1-9 ..." However there are only 4 figures above, not 9.

In all diagrams, the symbols of pumps and valves should be rotated in the opposite direction. They should show the correct direction of fluid flow. 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate author's corrections in line with my suggestions. This version of article looks much better.

There are still some mistakes in text. Please read it with attention. 
The vertical axis in figures 9,11,13 and 15 should be completed of the kind of power.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments to the authors

English grammar generally weak.

The word capacity is miss spelt a couple of time with an inappropriate use of the hyphen. Lines 128 and 97 it is written as ‘ca-pacity’ and later consumption is incorrectly written as con-sumption. The authors should be aware that a hyphen is often used at the end of a line when a word is split between two lines. Perhaps the wording has been copied verbatim from another document – probably a patent application as some of the drawings included in the paper certainly appear to be from a patent.

In figure 4 the addition of a suggested scale of the proposed machine would be useful.

The authors should try to use simple, everyday words whenever possible. It would make the paper easier to read. For example, the authors use the phrase ‘a plurality of …’ (line 145 etc.) No one speaks like this – why not say ‘number of…’ instead. There are other instances too.

Authors should define what they mean by vacuum.

Authors should describe the process their invention is replacing so readers can begin to understand why the ‘new’ machine is better.

The authors must correct the unit of energy they use throughout the paper from kW to kWh (kilowatt-hour). For example, if a compressor with an electrical power input of 15 kW runs for one-year (8760 hours) it uses 131,400 kWh of energy.

The authors must be consistent with the use of terminology throughout the paper. For example, in the diagrams they refer to ‘a box’ whilst in the text they write about the same thing and call it ‘a tank’.

The numbering of parts shown in Fig 1 etc should be consistent – the authors should replace the patent numbering with one consistent with the paper.

After carefully reading the paper I remain uncertain as to how energy is actually saved. Providing graphs is not complete evidence, the reason that lies behind the savings is needed. What is the engineering or scientific reason? This question must be answered by the authors.

A careful check of references is needed. I was unable to find some of the documents referenced.

In some of the figures the authors refer to a device called a Type11h. Please explain in the paper what this device is.

Transys is a useful piece of software for modelling thermodynamic machines and systems. It sometimes requires you to add your own model for particular device and sometimes offers a choice of coefficient for some of its built in models. The authors might say something about how transys was set up to model their new system. It would help others to repeat their experiment if they were interested.

Finally, the authors provide several graphs showing Transys results for several configurations of the design. However, they neglect to say why they chose the configurations they did or offer any explanation of why the results cam out as they did. These things must be corrected if the paper is to be published.

Good luck with your idea.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript covers an interesting R&D topic and fits the scope of the Journal. Nonetheless, the paper requires extra efforts to improve its quality and presentation. A set of comments are expounded hereafter.

- Regarding the format of the document:

The format of references must be slightly revised following the template of the Journal. For example, semi-colons must be used to separate surnames, abbreviated names of journals must be used, etc.

- About the content of the manuscript, as aforementioned, it covers an interesting topic and is well written. The comments after a careful revision are the following:

A common practice in scientific papers consists on describing in a brief manner the structure of the rest of the manuscript at the end of the Introduction.

The version of the software TRNSYS should be indicated for a better description. Indeed, this information can be useful for the interested reader.

The second section is too brief to constitute a single separated section. This issue must be solved for a proper presentation.

The last section should be divided into two separate sections. A section devoted to discuss the main findings and tentative applications of the reported research, and a section in the form of summarizing Conclusions.

The main limitations of the work should be commented briefly in the discussion. On the other hand, some further guidelines should be placed within the conclusions. For example, experimental validation of the proposed schemes could be a relevant future work.

An important aspect that the paper currently lacks and should be included within the discussion, deals with the comparison with previous literature and the clear indication of the contribution to the body of knowledge. The authors perform a number of simulations and comment the achieved results. This approach can be adequate for a congress contribution, but a high-quality journal requires significant contributions and specific results.