A Cleaner Delignification of Urban Leaf Waste Biomass for Bioethanol Production, Optimised by Experimental Design
, Miryan Cassanello 1,2, Cataldo De Blasio 3 and Miguel Galvagno 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors, an article entitled A. cleaner delignification of urban leaf waste biomass for bioethanol production, optimized by experimental design describe the study on green urbane waste valorization for further use in bioethanol production. The article generally is well written and study designed properly. However, before publication, some issues need clarification
1. The discussion section is very poor and mainly focused on the description of the results. The delignification process of urban waste was described earlier in many papers and could be easily discussed more deeply with connection to the presented results.
2. The conclusion section should be more focused on further applications of the developed process.
3. The colors range on Surface plots (Figure 5, 6) could be changed to rainbow or heat scale for better mark presented dependences.
Author Response
We acknowledge the thorough review carried out and the suggestions proposed. The submitted revised version has been prepared to consider the reviewer's comments as far as possible. Actions taken in response to the comments are attached, the reviewer's comments are recalled in italics, and manuscript extracts are highlighted for clarity.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The work presented by the authors is interesting and brings new light to current energy issues and the development of lignocellulosic biofuels.
The review lacks information on other treatments e.g. biophysical considered to be the most promising e.g. steam explosion (SE). The authors also focused on lignin as a material holding back the development of lignocellulosic biofuels forgetting the occurrence of extractive compounds in plants. These compounds contribute significantly to plant resistance to biotic factors. In addition, compounds derived from lignin and extractive compounds can be used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries as a valuable base of raw materials currently synthesized through chemical synthesis. This could contribute to a significant increase in the economic viability of biofuel production based on lignocellulosic materials. I suggest you read the following articles where these issues are addressed:
DOI:10.35812/CelluloseChemTechnol.2021.55.52
DOI:10.5604/01.3001.0014.8861
DOI:10.3390/f12050647
https://doi.org/10.1186/1754-6834-6-16
https://doi.org/10.1002/bit.25349
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2013.01.075
From my point of view of the statement: "The effect of low-temperature acid-oxidative digestion on the delignification of urban forest leaf waste typical of parks and streets of Buenos Aires city was investigated. It was formed by swept Platanus acerifolia leaves and stemmed since it is widely planted in major cities. The experimental design was used to interpret the parametric interaction among the examined factors (time, temperature, and solid loading). Box and Behnken design of experiments successfully provided an acceptable surface model that could predict the behavior of further experiments, even outside the initial parameter range."
They can be found in the earlier parts of the paper and the conclusions should only contain the key statements resulting from the observations and results. They can be partly supported by the generalised results.
The conclusions should not include the phrase " what he suggests". There is a results and discussion section for suggestions and comparison with the literature. According to the ISO standard on the use of units of measurement, spaces should be used after the value and before the unit.
Interesting work. There are a few shortcomings in it but they do not affect the subject of the article.
Author Response
We acknowledge the thorough review carried out and the suggestions proposed. The submitted revised version has been prepared to consider the reviewer's comments as far as possible. Actions taken in response to the comments are attached, the reviewer's comments are recalled in italics, and manuscript extracts are highlighted for clarity.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
