On the Chemical Composition and Hygroscopicity of Aerosols Deposited on the Insulators of Italian Power Lines

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper measured the aerosol deposited on the pover line insulators, then, simulated and analysis the conductive effect with relative humidity in a laboratory environment. The samples were collected during 2016 to 2019 over Italia. This paper provieds technical support for the power line safety management. This is a interesting study which related the electric power line and the atmospheric aerosol.

Lot contents are mentioned  in the supplementary materials, but I didn't find it.

Minor comments:

1 In 2.1, The physical insulator and its arrangement should be illustrated with a figure.

2 The Table 1 should be positioned near the first appearance in the text.

3 Chemical analysis should be enhanced due to many works on Chemical experiment.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting study, and I strongly recommend the publication of this article without delay. I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the authors for their achievement regarding the preparation of synthetic aerosol, mimicking the exact chemical composition under investigation. This endeavor facilitated the precise determination of critical parameters, including deliquescence and crystallization relative humidity, as well as the conductive impact of the aerosols.

Researchers and engineers around the world continually study flashover events and insulator contamination. They use testing facilities to simulate real-world conditions and understand how different factors, including aerosols and pollution, impact flashover and insulator performance. This is a significant concern in urban or industrial environments with polluted air. Overall, flashover events connected with aerosols and insulators are a critical concern in high-voltage electrical systems. Preventive measures and ongoing research are essential to maintain the integrity and reliability of these systems, especially in areas with pollution and adverse environmental conditions.

The only weak part of the manuscript in my opinion is the lack of a detailed statistical analysis indicating the correctness of choosing specific measures of the position and dispersion of random variables during analysis. Please add the statistical analysis subsection to the Methods part.

Some minor comments below:

L14 – Elemental carbon should not be capitalized; it should be written in lowercase letters.

L29 – hazardous? But regarding which hazard, please explain

L41 – “deposited over there” – I don’t like this term (ultrafine and fine particles are in perpetual motion, and their gravimetric deposition takes a considerable amount of time. Furthermore, it's essential to contemplate the potential for charge transfer. Will electrostatic phenomena solely affect particles deposited on the surface, or should we also consider their impact on airborne particles?).

L63: “As a remarkable fraction (>40%) of the atmospheric aerosol is composed by water-soluble compounds” – such prevailing loading of inorganic ions is observed rather in highly polluted areas.

L65 – lack of space “liquid phase[15–17]”

L115: there is no such thing as “Non-soluble pollution”. Of course I know what authors mean but please keep proper nomenclature

L121 and 131: please change deposit into the deposition layer or explain in the footnotes that this nomenclature is used by standard

L141 – delete dash after “insulation design-“

L181: this description is not needed

L188: please provide the producer (all of one type?)

L188: were installed – please put more information (who coordinated this?)

L223 – how this sponge was cleaned before collecting particles from the insulator? Acid mixture?

L256 – please define filers were dried

L262 – please define dry conditions

L264 – what about filter blanks?

L462: please provide Fig 4 in a much better resolution

L498: please provide a reference

L599 – non-soluble pollution (the is nothing like non-soluble pollution) please define what the authors mean – non non-soluble PM compounds.

L607 – please delete the naming “terrigenous” – very rarely used in the scientific literature – the location depends on crustal elements is the better naming

L611 – relative proportion – calculated according to the total presence of those elements in the PM mass?

L614 – please delete this fragment - the complete table is shown in, just the number of table and number of Appendix

L614 - The Unknown Fraction  (UF_NSDD) will be better investigated in future works. Here we just underline that the obtained results are in line with literature studies and point towards a crustal origin of the non-carbonaceous fraction of the NSDD – this fragment must be reworded since is too colloquial, please change its wording to indicate the scientific nature of the achievement

L620 – Fig 4. The ionic composition of PM is usually dominated by SO42−, NO3−, and NH4+ ions, why so great amounts of Na+? and Ca2+?

L650 - (i.e. Fe2O3, TiO2...) – please define more oxides or delete the dots

L654 – please reword the whole sentence – it's too long.

 

L684: where is the text reference to Fig 7?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Proofreading of this article by a native speaker editorial office will be beneficial for this article

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf