Thermal Simulation Studies for the Characterization of a Cyclotron Liquid Target with Thick Niobium Target Windows

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article describes a simulation model of a cyclotron liquid target system that was developed to study the thermal behavior of the target system and built using well established commercial software. The model was used to study the use of a thick Niobium target window which is needed for the production of certain radiometals. The model was validated against experimental data and the simulations demonstrate the expected behavior of the use of thicker targets needing increased coolant mass flow rate. The model is useful since some of these studies are not easily accessible through experimentation. The results are important enough to be published but the manuscript needs a few corrections and improvements to be ready for publication. After these corrections the manuscript will be ready for publication.

Here are some specific comments:

1. Figure 1. It would be very helpful to label the components, rather than relying on the color/shading scheme some of which are hard to see.

2. Reference [15] on line 74 should be [16]

3.  The sentence in Lines 290-293 in very convoluted and unclear, it needs to be split into two and articulated much better.

4. The comparison to experimental data for the dependence on the initial temperature of the cooling water from ref [16] is not very easy to do and should be elaborated some more with more specific details of how the comparison was performed.

5. The helium results should be validated with experimental data.

6. The manuscript is missing the discussion section, the current version of the discussion section seems to be text leftover from the template. For example it would be very important to discuss the finding shown in Fig 25, which shows that using the thicker target windows increases the maximum temperature while the average temperature stays about the same. This seems to suggest that the point where the beam is incident on the thick target could turn into the point of failure for these thick windows.

 

  

Author Response

Please find answers in attached pdf

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Small corrections:

Rows 85,86, Table 1: the form of table 1 is not conform to the standard of the magazine, the table have to be centered into the page;

Row 142, Table 2: the form of table 2 is not conform to the standerd of the magazine;

Row 365, Table 3: as for the previous;

Figure 1: The caption that describes the figure 1 use as reference the colors of each component. But it could be clearer if you insert ssome text in the figure to clearly identify the different components. In particualr, the target window (dark green), and the titanium wndows(blue), because the colors of these two elements are not evident in the picture.

Figure 2: the use of colors grey and black to distinguish the two curves (stopping power and simulated power distribution) is not optimal. Better if red and blue colors are used.

Rows 148, 149, 150: the indent of these three rows are not conform to the standard of the magazine.

Row 66: "[19-15] may be this means [9,10,11,12,13,14,15] in this case it is fine, ok. Otherwhise you have to write [9,15]. Please check.

Row 81: "[17-19]" --> "[17,18,19]"

Row 156: "[20], [21]" --> "[20, 21]"

Row 158: "[20], [22]" --> "[20,22]"

Figure 11: the use of colors grey and black and of the thickness to distinguish the two curves is not very clear. I suggest using two different colors (blue and red) or different typos.

Row 316: "form" -->  "from"

Row 357: "Figure 23 Such" --> "Figure 23. Such"

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please find answers in attached pdf

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf