Preparation of Cementitious Material with Wet Fly Ash by Hydrothermal Reaction and Calcination
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper reported the utilization of coal fired fly ash by preparing cementitious material. Lime was used as another raw material. The best condition of hydrothermal reaction was obtained at last. Several questions should be answered before acceptance.
1. The title is too broad to express the specific content of the article.
2. The main utilization of fly ash is cement kiln. Do the authors want to further improve the utilization rate of fly ash or replace the traditional cement preparation method by preparing cementitious materials with hydrothermal method? Corresponding reasons need to be introduced for different purposed.
3. Is there any leaching risk of heavy metals in fly ash?
4. Is there waste water in hydrothermal method? Does the waste water need to be treated?
5. Line 360, 3.3.3 SEM should be 3.3.3 Surface morphology analysis.
6. English writing should be polised. For example, in line 50, In this paper, the reaction degree of fly ash 50 and lime in the hydrothermal reaction was measured, and the content of the hydrothermal reaction products was quantified.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The article "Preparation of cementitious material with wet fly ash" is interesting. However, a few comments are given below,
1) The abstract is not clear. An abstract is a short summary of your completed research. It is intended to describe your work without going into great detail. Abstracts should be self-contained and concise, explaining your work as briefly and clearly as possible. Please take some time to revise and rearrange the abstract to highlight the overall of your research.
2) For readers to quickly catch the contribution of this work, it would be better to highlight major difficulties and challenges, and the authors' original achievements to overcome them, in a clearer way in the Introduction section. Also, the recent literature available in this field should be included in the introduction section. A few recent articles are given below for your reference,
a) Khan, K., Ahmad, A., Amin, M. N., Ahmad, W., Nazar, S., & Arab, A. M. A. (2022). Comparative Study of Experimental and Modeling of Fly Ash-Based Concrete. Materials, 15(11), 3762.
b) Amin, M. N., Hissan, S., Shahzada, K., Khan, K., & Bibi, T. (2019). Pozzolanic reactivity and the influence of rice husk ash on early-age autogenous shrinkage of concrete. Frontiers in Materials, 6, 150.
c) Khan, K., Salami, B. A., Iqbal, M., Amin, M. N., Ahmed, F., & Jalal, F. E. (2022). Compressive Strength Estimation of Fly Ash/Slag Based Green Concrete by Deploying Artificial Intelligence Models. Materials, 15(10), 3722.
d) Amin, M. N., Khan, K., Javed, M. F., Aslam, F., Qadir, M. G., & Faraz, M. I. (2022). Prediction of Mechanical Properties of Fly-Ash/Slag-Based Geopolymer Concrete Using Ensemble and Non-Ensemble Machine-Learning Techniques. Materials, 15(10), 3478.
3) Please number the equations, and equations must be quoted with proper references. Further, list all the abbreviations and symbols clearly.
4) Conclusions are too limited to prove the significant outcome of this study. Please highlight your results and present them in a systematic way.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
"Preparation of cementitious material with wet fly ash" Interesting article. However, the Author must spend more time on the manuscript before publishing. I have included a few comments here to improve the quality of the article,
1) Abstract is too short to express the whole idea of your study. Try to summarize the methodology, objective, and materials with obtained results in the form of quantitative values.
2) Introduction also too shot. Since the construction industries and users are facing several issues related to the increasing cost of raw materials day by day. The present work implies great value, However, the cost analysis for this work is missing in the text. Therefore, it is necessary to include the cost analysis when compared with existing traditional methods.
3) Also, the recent literature available in this field should be included in the introduction section. A few examples are included here for your reference,
- Khan, K., Ahmad, A., Amin, M. N., Ahmad, W., Nazar, S., & Arab, A. M. A. (2022). Comparative Study of Experimental and Modeling of Fly Ash-Based Concrete. Materials, 15(11), 3762.
- Khan, K., Salami, B. A., Iqbal, M., Amin, M. N., Ahmed, F., & Jalal, F. E. (2022). Compressive Strength Estimation of Fly Ash/Slag Based Green Concrete by Deploying Artificial Intelligence Models. Materials, 15(10), 3722.
- Khan, K., Ashfaq, M., Iqbal, M., Khan, M. A., Amin, M. N., Shalabi, F. I., ... & Jalal, F. E. (2022). Multi Expression Programming Model for Strength Prediction of Fly-Ash-Treated Alkali-Contaminated Soils. Materials, 15(11), 4025.
- Amin, M. N., Khan, K., Javed, M. F., Aslam, F., Qadir, M. G., & Faraz, M. I. (2022). Prediction of Mechanical Properties of Fly-Ash/Slag-Based Geopolymer Concrete Using Ensemble and Non-Ensemble Machine-Learning Techniques. Materials, 15(10), 3478.
4) Line 77, "table-L9 (34)" what does it mean?
5) Which design codes did you use for testing?
6) Line 88 "Calcination temperatures of 800°C, 850°C and, 900°C were chosen" Why ? Please include proper explanations or references.
7) Table numbers are not in order. Please proofread before you submit the manuscript next time.
8) Conclusions are too limited to prove the significant outcome of this study.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Paper ID: applsci-2167241
Type: Essay
Title: Preparation of cementitious material with wet fly ash
Authors: Peiyu Shi , Bei Huang
This paper investigates the preparation of cementitious material with wet fly ash. The paper is fair and can be considered for publication, although some issues need to be addressed. Following are some comments for the authors to consider:
1. Novelty in comparison to recent literature? Need to be emphasized.
- The relevant literature might discuss the results in the paper.
- The mineral compositions of steel slag are shown in Fig. 2???
- Please cite all standards in the text.
- There should be space between the number and the unit.
- “Taking the fly ash lime system under the optimal autoclave system as the research object. Calcination temperatures of 800°C, 850°C and, and 900°C were chosen, and calcination times of 0.5 h, 1.0 h, 1.5 h and 2.0 h were chosen for the calcination tests.” Do the authors think it is environmentally and cost-effective?
- Line #225. Table 2 should be Table 3.
- Please add the error bars of Fig 7.
- Throughout the text, some typos must be eliminated.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Accept in present form
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is well presented. Can be accepted in its present form.
