Equipment Performance, Costs and Constraints of Packaging and Transporting Rice Straw for Alternative Uses to Burning in the “Parc Natural l’Albufera de València” (Spain)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review comment:

The article deals about rice straw use as energy resource with respect to possible agricultural use of selected area. This topic is relevant to the journal and also the use of straw as energy resource is currently discussed.

First section describes natural conditions of selected area, with some details. The authors then advance to description of proposed process for straw processing and utilization. Selected area was divided to some sub-areas with respect to existing road connectivity. Proposed machinery is also described, with needed implements. This section is good structured, with needed details for analyzing the selected methods.

Next sections describe in detail all inputs for later simulation, and interpretation of measured parameters. First was observed the capacity of equipment, in order to determine basic costs per produced volume or amount.  All processing and handling times were monitored. This section describes in detail the methodology and also all results. The method is clearly described and it is very simple to compare used method and results with similar applications. Important details are presented in tables. In second step, authors describe costs of used straw processing methods. This section is also well sectioned with every process step described and analyzed. Some details are presented in tables.

In discussion, results are summarized and some proposals are made. This section could be extended, with some more informations and also with comparison to other articles with similar applications or similar methods used.

This article is relevant to the scope of Journal, where the focus of article is agricultural production. Objective of the article is clearly defined, with some  options provided. Method of study is described more in general, with many assumptions, or there are values in the text, without reference.Describe more in detail used numerical techniques, add some literature sources. Please, describe more in detail Your results and why Your results are different from cited literature.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Major comments:

1. The manuscript title should contain some words that cover the economic aspects investigated in the study.
2. The abstract is poor and does not contain any results. Moreover, this sentence, "The straw can be used for crop mulching and as beds for livestock, etc.", should be moved before the study aim paragraph.
3. Keywords not enough and do not reflect the study content adequately; please choose more suitable keywords.
4. What is the novelty of this study?
5. The introduction misses discussing previous studies that handled the same problem to overcome the previous defects.
6. Most of the references are websites or webpages, and in the Spanish language, there are too many articles about handling rice straw in general not belong only to the study area, which must be included instead of the local Spanish reports; authors must cite more international articles to link your work with the international community.
7. Again, for example, Ref. No. 14; SMART MULCH, you can discuss this method of handling rice straw by citing scientific articles instead of websites.
8. What are the environmental aspects of your study?
9. Page 7, Ln 217-219: The units must be uniformed when making a comparison. In the following few lines, the authors did not specify which value belong to each collecting method.
10. The discussion is too short, in addition, references from 27 to 34 in this part, all are local Spanish studies or websites, indicating this study does not fit the international community.
11. The language is poor, the manuscript has many weak sentences and grammar mistakes, and needs to be revised by a native speaker.

 

Minor comments:

1. The last sentence in the abstract is too long.
2. Page 1, Ln 12: Please correct CO2 to make "2" in the subscript position.
3. Page 1, Ln 35: What "Mg" unit means?
4. Page 3, Ln 122: Is (cdg) the abbreviation of “Centre of gravity” or “Centro de gravedad”? Please do not mix between English and Spanish words, consider revising the whole manuscript’ abbreviations and Spanish words.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In my opinion, the article presents the issue of rice straw for alternative uses to burning in the “Parc Natural l’Albufera de Valencia’ (Spain) in a complete way. The undertaken subject of the review constitutes a valuable work, the methodology in article is clearly presented.

However, I mention minor inaccuracies detected:

• Line 115 Propose a different further disposal of the mown rice straw.
• Should biomass be dried before transport, what are the energy costs associated with it? Is it possible to take into account possible energy yield in the process, e.g. combustion, gasification, pyrolysis or other type of disposal?
• Please, explain the humidity definition in contest the value higher than 100% (table 3).
• How will the biomass be managed after packing and collection?
• Is this solution generally more ecological, justify taking into account the necessity of transport, packaging and subsequent utilization of biomass.

This article is relevant to the scope of Journal, where the focus of article is agricultural production.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Plz revise the abstract and conclusion.   There should have some clear conlcusion  and datas in abstract and conclusion. 

Author Response

Following the reviewer comments, we have changed the abstract including clear conclusion and data, as can be seen in the last part of the abstract:

"The costs of all the operations included between raking to unloading in the producer area stocking point ranged between 28.1 € t-1 and 51 € t-1. These costs were compared with the price of rain-fed cereal straw (wheat and barley), which is the most abundant, noting that the years in which rain-fed cereal straw reached high prices, rice straw could serve as a competitive product; however, in years when the former is cheap, it would be necessary to subsidise the harvesting of rice straw.”

In the 'Conclusions" section we have not included data because they are included in the 'Discussion" section. In the last section we prefer to give general conclusions, because data depends on a lot of particular conditions, and it is preferable to see the data together with that conditions, and this is done in the sections "Results" and "Discussion".

With respect to English writing, the first document was revised by a native English teacher, and the last version was revised by the MDPI Englis editing services.

Many thanks for all your suggestions and comments.