A Study on the Application of Recycled Concrete Powder in an Alkali-Activated Cementitious System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

Manuscript Number: Processes-213242

Title: A Study on application of recycled concrete powder in alkali-activated cementitious system

The paper deals with the experimental study on application of Recycled concrete powder in alkali-activated cementitious system. The paper needs minor improvement and the comments for the paper are appended below.

 

 

Comments and Suggestions for the Manuscript:

1.    Page 1 Line 29: Arrange the keywords in alphabetical order.

2.    Additional literature has to be included which are related to alkali activated cementitious system mechanism and various source material used for preparation, which will help the readers understand the basic of  reaction mechanism  and also it will improve the quality of the manuscript.

3.    RCP material characters like Specific gravity, Particle size gradation curve may be included to improve the quality of the manuscript

4.    Page 2 Line 89: A NaOH solution with 9% Na2O content was used as the alkali activator” provide proper literature support or reason for selecting 9% NaO content solution.

5.    Page 2 – Justification is needed for using laboratory tap water, as it may contains dissolved solids that may hinder the reaction in alkali reaction.

6.    Page 3 Line 112-116: Provide literature support for “Increased water demand

7.    Page 5 Line 165: “This is mainly because the passivated RCP particles are more rounded than the slag particles and play a ball effect” justify with the literature.

8.    Section 3.4 XRD analysis – improve the section by adding additional literature references fort the validation of the XRD analysis.

Page 10 Line 311-312 Add literature support to validate the reason, also determination of unreacted particles through XRD analysis may be explained in detail.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In this research feasibility of using recycled concrete powder in alkali-activated cementitious system is studied. The content of this research is quite now and possess scientific and practical significance. Each section meets standard requirements, and writing quality is excellent. Some comments for improvement are given below:

1)     In abstract mention about the percentage incorporation of RCP.

2)     In abstract mention about the optimum percentage of RCP.

3)     More light should be put on the methodology section. Mention the names of properties specifically, this will increase the visibility of this study.

4)     Introduction is weakest part of this paper. More studies on the RCP are available, must consider the recent literature.

5)     L73: Include the reference to validate your claims, cite relevant studies on RCP use in OPC based systems.

6)     Figure 1 is poor in terms of quality.

7)     Table 1 is missing units of quantities

8)     Keywords must be revised. These must not include the words already included in the title. Mention about the properties or characteristics studied.

9)     Chemical formulas must be revised considering the mistakes in subscripts.

10)  The discussion of microstructural images is inconclusive. More elaboration is needed

11)  Conclusions must concise and crispy.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper focused on the application of recycled concrete powder in alkali-activated cementitious system. The following points need to be clarified before its further consideration:

1. It is suggested that the authors should modify the last paragraph of the introduction to: 1) clearly mention the goal and novelty of this work, 2) mention the methodology used and its important to place the major hypothesis, 3) mention the structure of the paper or procedure of their work and expected results.
2. The authors mention why they selected 3 days, 7 days and 28 days for time periods.
3. Figs 4 and 5 have no standard deviations? How many times each test was repeated? That needs to be clarified.
4. The paper lacks a discussion on the weakness and limitations of the present methodology/study.
5. The authors could show some pictures of the tests performed such as compression or bending tests. That attracts the attention of the readers.

 

Typos:

Line 122 there should be a space between numbers and units, “40mm” should read “40 mm”. Please implement this throughout the paper

Lines 224-227, some sentences are too long and needs to be shortened. Please implement this throughout the paper

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The points were addressed reasonably.