A Study on the Development of Livestock Odor (Ammonia) Monitoring System Using ICT (Information and Communication Technology)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors need to provide data showing the measurement accuracy of the System, use standard gas to calibrate the sensor in the System and provide the calibration data in the R&D section.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper describes work implementing a monitoring system for livestock odor (represented by ammonia) at a number of farms. The work is novel and interesting and worthy of publication. It has clearly been reviewed by others already since there are some changes to text already. I did not focus on minor spelling, grammar, and typo errors as a result. I do have some suggestions that I think could improve the paper a little and help the reader understand the system a bit better if others want to replicate this setup elsewhere.

Page 2, line 83 -"The system was constructed by presenting the requirements for each component" This is unclear as to what it means. I think the authors are just saying that a description of the system follows. If so, I would rewrite as, "Following is a description of the system using the requirements of each individual component."

pp. 2-3, line 86-133, In the description of the chemical sensors themselves, there is no discussion about the expected lifetime of these sensors. Electrochemical sensors are known to degrade in sensitivity over time as the reference cell is used up, especially in high concentration environments. This requires either refurbishing/recalibrating the sensor or replacing it. It would be helpful to have a 1 paragraph discussion of the observed (or expected) lifetime of the sensors used here.

p. 4, line 184-185 “http://ilemoms.or.kr/insertSensorOu.do?FARM=2106004002&SENSOR=01-NH3@01- 184
NH3&VALUE=12.1,5.7,10.3,12.2,0,0,1,0”   I would remove the automatic internet formatting for this typed out link or when it goes online, the pdf will be trying to send visitors to the link and giving errors.

Finally, somewhere in the discussion (maybe a section 3.3) and repeated in the Conclusion, I think it would be very helpful to have a paragraph or two discussing costs of the system. Other places are far behind implementing anything like this and it would be helpful to have estimates of costs for others who would think about implementing something like it. Costs could be mentioned both for an individual farm who wanted to set this up and for the larger overall system for the ministry and/or local government. Estimated costs could also be broken down by startup/initial costs and expected ongoing maintenance costs.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

the manuscript presents a system for monitoring ammonia from livestock. The topic is important, but the novelty of the paper is not enough. Here are some detailed comments.

1. The introduction needs to be improved, the authors need to show more state of the art progress on the odor monitoring system, like enose and the related gaseous sensors.
2. Section 2.1: This part must be rewritten, you need to show the measuring parameters such as detection limit and range of the sensor, the first paragraph is useless.
3. It seems that the system measured ammonia only, in this case, it can not be called an odor monitoring system. Livestock odor is typically complex mixtures including ammonia, H2S, VFA... The current system is more like a remote ammonia monitoring unit.
4. As for the measuring of the ammonia concentration by the sensor, did you validate the sensor measurements? How can you ensure the accuracy of the sensor measuring? How long can the sensor accurately measure?
5. Fig 4 and 5: the wind speeds are the same for nearly 20 locations, is this possible?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Line 36 Reference 10 concludes that sulfur compounds are key odor components. How can odor be based only on ammonia or amines?

Line 45 Reference 15 in the References is incomplete

Line 54 – Reference 16 has nothing to do with odors or analytical techniques.

Line 82 – Again, reference 16 has nothing about the sensors.

Lines 84 -86. Not a clear sentence.

Lines 86-89 Where are these performance characteristics coming from? What sensor was used?

Line 150 The sentence indicates that the sensor measures odor units. Nothing was said about odor unit measurement in the sensor section.

Lines 196-198. The system says that odor can be measured. No sensor was described.

Line 209 – Now the authors say that a sensor measure amine complexes. No such sensor was described previously

Lines 381-395 – No citations for references 17 through 25 were found in the text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx