Study on Three-Stage Counter-Current Water Washing Desalination Characteristics and Mechanism of High Chlorine Waste Incineration Fly Ash

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled „Study on three-stage counter-current water washing desalination characteristics and mechanism of high chlorine waste incineration fly ash”, submitted to Processes is a research paper that is interesting. The article is supported by literature review of 46 sources. Vast majority of references originated from China. Some research from abroad should be summoned, to show that problems with MSW and other hazardous wastes incineration residues are present all over the world, and research in this area is worldwide. The methods and experimental design applied are good and the research seem to be properly conducted. Conclusions are consistent with the paper. I see some issues that need to be corrected, especially in the introduction section and connected to the presentation of results. I recommend the paper to be published after minor revision.

I give some specified suggestions below:

1.      The introduction section is quite short. It should be extended with foreign research.

2.      Part of table 6 about Raw FA α and Raw FA β should be given in “Materials and methods” section.

3.      Some editing issues are also present:

·         “25 ℃” – there should be no space between numer and degree symbol.

·         „20g” „20min” -  there should be the space between numer and unit.

·         Figure 1 – the font size i stoo small.

·         „mg/l” – mg/L should be used.

·         Section 4 title should be „Conclusions”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is good and has some novelty/contribution. However, there are some observations made which needs to be addressed before the paper can be considered for publication

·         The abstract was well written

·         The introduction is lacking extensive review of previous studies. There is need to add more literature

·         Authors focused mostly on background studies in the introduction section, please review literatures so that readers can understand how you came up with the research gap.

·         Please elaborate on research gap and objectives of your studies

·         Please include a table for the properties of your materials like the fly ash used

·         Include some Figs of your experiments for ease of understanding

·         The results were well discussed the results were not compared with previous studies in literature

·         3.0 Results and Discussions, 4.0 also results and Discussions? How? Why?

·         I think 4.0 is conclusion, right? Please correct!!!!

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper has some interesting information on high-Cl fly ash washing for desalination. However, there are serious issues with how the data has been presented, inconsistencies with writing, and the logical flow of the manuscript. Therefore, I suggest major revisions before publishing this in process.

Abstract – this sentence is very confusing. “Due to the adsorption of calcium sulfate precipitation,..” Please rephrase it.

Arsenic is not a heavy metal. It is a metalloid

Figure 1 has an issue with the resolution

Figure 2 – concentration unit is missing. How many times were these experiments repeated? Error bars need to be included

Figure 3 (mins can be put as an axes unit. No need to repeat it)

Table 2 (Same as the above comment)

Table 4 – change “dechlorine effect%” to “dechlorination effect%”

Some chemical equations are missing superscripts and subscripts

The Cl mitigation % s should be rounded to the nearest decimal point. I do not think the data has two decimal point accuracy.

Pb speciation is a well-known concept, and Wang et al. are not the authors who discovered it

Chlorine is not an anion; chloride is, and be mindful about the usage of the word

Table 6 – units are missing for metal concentrations

In addition to these comments, please make the writing more rigorous and logically flowing and include chemistry explanations where necessary and statistical analysis (error bars, standard deviations etc.). Just reporting data will not make this a top 10% manuscript in the journal or the field.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All comments addressed

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors have adequately addressed my comments and now the manuscript can be considered for a publication.