Alien Wood Species as a Resource for Wood-Plastic Composites

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the main problem with your work is that it does not have a clear aim. There are only laboratory tests without trying to make a scientific hypothesis and confirm Are the alien species are suitable for the production of WPC? It is difficult to say without a reference species, for example Pine. Without a clear goal, the conclusions are just simple observations.

Specific comments:

L. 38 accordnig to ... what is described in 10,15?

L. 40 explain the abbreviation

L. 46-53 method descripion - wrong chapter

L. 95 provide type, producer of chipper and parameters of chip off procedure

L. 96 Fig. 2. We can see the particles are much larger than 1.5mm??? 

L. 107 box should have three dimnesions; mm-2?

L. 109 and next, provide pressure values in SI pressure units MPa

Table 2 mixture in what proportions?

L. 141-142 What is the meaning of (5)? It is about five samples?

Fig. 6-10 arrange the Y axes from 0 point. So the real relationship will be visible.

L. 218-219 no method of longitude and slenderness ratio determination was given. How do you know this is so?

L. 233-236 This statement is not supperted by the result of the study.

L. 290-295. Please, describe the method of 3D WPD products manufacturing or don't mention this in the results section.

Therefore I think the article shoud be substantially improved before publication.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the article is very topical in terms of its focus on new materials that are environmentally friendly. I have a few comments on this article: • Please make the discussion clearer and broader • Finally, write more information on how this material can be used in practice.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Dear

 

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of my manuscript titled ˝Alien Wood Species as a Resource for Wood-Plastic Composites˝ to Applied Sciences. We appreciate the time and effort that the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript.

We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect all suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript - I attached also manuscript with tracked changes.

 

Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns:

 

Point 1. Please make the discussion clearer and broader

The discussion of results is changed/corrected from L237 further

 

Point 2. Finally, write more information on how this material can be used in practice.

We add example of 3D shaped composites, we improved the conclusion part for this and add some future plans.

 

In addition to the above comments, all spelling and grammatical errors pointed out by the reviewers have been corrected.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

 

 

Sincerely, Maks Merela, 15.12.2020

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

„Alien Wood Species as a Resource for Wood-Plastic Composites” present an interesting study focused on the utilisation of invasive wood species, dangerous for local biodiversity, for industrial purposes.

Generally, the research was well-planned and carefully performed, and the results are described clearly and understandably. Moreover, it was shown that the proposed method of wood-plastic composites can be used for particular industrial purposes, i.e. production of tableware.

A few comments/suggestions to the paper:

• I think that we cannot say that the differences between the boards made of different wood species are small (Lines 168-169) – from Figure 4 we can see a significant difference in structure (size of particles) between the board made of the tree of heaven and the others, and from Tables 3 and 4 we can see that there are statistically important differences between some particular properties of the boards tested.
• How can you explain the differences in thickness swelling and water absorption between WPC made of different wood species? Please, provide your hypothesis.
• Please, describe in Conclusions some potential application of WPC made of invasive wood species, different than production of tableware.
• Do you plan to continue the research and, e.g. try to increase wood content in WPC and exchange PE with any other natural polymers?

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

 

Dear

 

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of my manuscript titled ˝Alien Wood Species as a Resource for Wood-Plastic Composites˝ to Applied Sciences. We appreciate the time and effort that the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript.

We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect all suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript - I attached also manuscript with tracked changes.

Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns:

Point 1: I think that we cannot say that the differences between the boards made of different wood species are small (Lines 168-169) – from Figure 4 we can see a significant difference in structure (size of particles) between the board made of the tree of heaven and the others, and from Tables 3 and 4 we can see that there are statistically important differences between some particular properties of the boards tested.

Thank you for the comment and suggestion. We corrected this part.

Point 2: How can you explain the differences in thickness swelling and water absorption between WPC made of different wood species? Please, provide your hypothesis.

We added explanation, corrected the text (L332-L342)

Point 3: Please, describe in Conclusions some potential application of WPC made of invasive wood species, different than production of tableware.

We add example of 3D shaped composites, we improved the conclusion part for this.

Point 4. Do you plan to continue the research and, e.g. try to increase wood content in WPC and exchange PE with any other natural polymers?

Yes we are. We thank you for this important comment. We add description before conclusions.

 

In addition to the above comments, all spelling and grammatical errors pointed out by the reviewers have been corrected.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

 

Sincerely, Maks Merela, 15.12.2020

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I appreciate the effort to improve the article. It's now much better. So I will suggest to accept it.