Chemical Looping Enhanced Oil Shale-to-Liquid Fuels Process: Modeling, Parameter Optimization, and Performance Analysis
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments to authors:
The manuscript has been presented well. Title reflects the content. Abstract was prepared with sufficient information. Introduction provides overview and background with relevant and recent references. Process design and methodology presents clear procedure for performing simulation of each unit. Calculation methods were provided with complete and relevant equations. All the results were presented with insightful discussion and interpretation. Conclusion summarises all the significant findings of the research.
General comments for review:
Manuscript requires to be checked for grammatical and typographical errors.
Author Response
The manuscript has been presented well. Title reflects the content. Abstract was prepared with sufficient information. Introduction provides overview and background with relevant and recent references. Process design and methodology presents clear procedure for performing simulation of each unit. Calculation methods were provided with complete and relevant equations. All the results were presented with insightful discussion and interpretation. Conclusion summaries all the significant findings of the research.
General comments for review:
Manuscript requires to be checked for grammatical and typographical errors.
Answer: Thank you for your comments. We have checked and corrected the grammatical errors in the full text, and typeset the article using the journal template.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
In this manuscript the authors explained and discussed about the chemical looping hydrogen production technology to convert retorting gas to hydrogen, and the hydrogen produced is used for shale oil hydrogenation to improve the oil quality. In this paper, the new process is modeled and simulated; then technoeconomic analysis is carried out. Technical analysis shows that shale oil yield is increased from 65% to 95.7% and the yield of light fraction is increased from 20% to 64% - 83%. Economic analysis shows that the CLeSTL process with ligh fraction hydrogenation has the highest investment profit rate and large profit space. In addition, when the oil price is lower than 50 $/bbl, the investment profit is 5%, which shows strong anti-risk ability.The manuscript is well written and explained the observed data with enough discussion. The manuscript can be accepted in its current form.
Author Response
In this manuscript the authors explained and discussed about the chemical looping hydrogen production technology to convert retorting gas to hydrogen, and the hydrogen produced is used for shale oil hydrogenation to improve the oil quality. In this paper, the new process is modeled and simulated; then technoeconomic analysis is carried out. Technical analysis shows that shale oil yield is increased from 65% to 95.7% and the yield of light fraction is increased from 20% to 64% - 83%. Economic analysis shows that the CLeSTL process with ligh fraction hydrogenation has the highest investment profit rate and large profit space. In addition, when the oil price is lower than 50 $/bbl, the investment profit is 5%, which shows strong anti-risk ability. The manuscript is well written and explained the observed data with enough discussion. The manuscript can be accepted in its current form.
Answer: The authors are very grateful for the valuable comments by the reviewers.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The author studied on the chemical looping enhanced oil shale-to-liquid fuels process: Modeling, parameters optimization, and performance analysis. The article was written in a very detailed and informative manner. Just some matters need to be considered before proceeding with the publication step.
1. Figure 15, Y-axis needs to be labeled in detail, what is the percentage referring to, is it shale oil yield (%)?
2. Figure 15. The percentage yield for each bar chart needs to be labeled.
3. The writing style is combining the method together with methodology. The author needs to carefully highlight the method used from the result to ease the reader to understand the flow of the study.
4. Add more 5 years recent references. Only 5 out of 30 were coming from recent references.
Author Response
The author studied on the chemical looping enhanced oil shale-to-liquid fuels process: Modeling, parameters optimization, and performance analysis. The article was written in a very detailed and informative manner. Just some matters need to be considered before proceeding with the publication step.
- Figure 15, Y-axis needs to be labeled in detail, what is the percentage referring to, is it shale oil yield (%)?
- Figure 15. The percentage yield for each bar chart needs to be labeled.
Answer: Thank you for your comments. Figure 15 is not appropriate. We have corrected it, and given the percentage yield for each bar chart in Figure 15.
- The writing style is combining the method together with methodology. The author needs to carefully highlight the method used from the result to ease the reader to understand the flow of the study.
Answer: Thank you for your comments. We have put the formulas and methods in the results and discussion section into a separate methodology section.
- Add more 5 years recent references. Only 5 out of 30 were coming from recent references.
Answer: Thank you for your comments. We have added more references of recent 5 years in the revised paper.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
