Carbonaceous Adsorbent Derived from Sulfur-Impregnated Heavy Oil Ash and Its Lead Removal Ability from Aqueous Solution
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this work, carbonaceous material from heavy oil ash was used as an adsorbent with the application in lead removal. The authors have performed the 2 models on the data adsorption. However, please consider the following comments:
- The similarity of this work has been found 32% by Turnitin which is a bit more for this journal.
- The authors should report the adsorption capacity for the product in the abstract of the manuscript.
- The authors should compare the capacity adsorptions from this study with similar literature and provide a table of comparison and explain the advantage of using this adsorbent comparing exist adsorbents in the literature.
- If the adsorption was measured in various pH I would rate more to this manuscript.
- The English language should be improved.
- The following references should be added:
- An easy synthesis for preparing bio-based hybrid adsorbent useful for fast adsorption of polar pollutants. R Sadraei, MC Paganini, P Calza, G Magnacca, Nanomaterials 9 (5), 731
- Bio-based substances from compost as reactant and active phase for selective capture of cationic pollutants from wastewater. G Magnacca, FN Dos Santos, R Sadraei, Frontiers in Chemistry 8
Author Response
Thank you for considering the acceptance of our manuscript. We totally agree with your comments and improvements, and followed you in improving our manuscript. The improvements for your comments are as follows;
‧The similarity of this work has been found 32% by Turnitin which is a bit more for this journal.
My paper was revised to decrease the similarity and was checked by Plagiarism checker.
‧The authors should report the adsorption capacity for the product in the abstract of the manuscript.
The adsorption capacity was added into the abstract.
‧The authors should compare the capacity adsorptions from this study with similar literature and provide a table of comparison and explain the advantage of using this adsorbent comparing exist adsorbents in the literature.
Table of comparison with other adsorbent and its explanation were added into the manuscript.
‧If the adsorption was measured in various pH I would rate more to this manuscript.
Thank you for your good advice. I added the references and explanation for figure of pH dependence.
‧The English language should be improved.
English was proofread by a native speaker.
‧The following references should be added:
An easy synthesis for preparing bio-based hybrid adsorbent useful for fast adsorption of polar pollutants. R Sadraei, MC Paganini, P Calza, G Magnacca, Nanomaterials 9 (5), 731
Bio-based substances from compost as reactant and active phase for selective capture of cationic pollutants from wastewater. G Magnacca, FN Dos Santos, R Sadraei, Frontiers in Chemistry 8
Thank you for your introduction of good reference papers. These references are added into the manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Paper entitled “Preparation of Carbonaceous Adsorbent from Heavy Oil Ash using Sulfur-Impregnation, and its Lead Removal Ability from Aqueous Solution” meets the necessary standards for publication in this journal.
Please check the entire manuscript carefully for typographical errors.
I recommend updating the bibliography. The newest reference is from 2017.
It would have been interesting for the authors to compare with other adsorbent materials used to Pb (II), Cu(II) and Zn(II) remove.
Final Conclusion: The paper with minor revision meets the necessary standards for publication.
Author Response
Thank you for considering the acceptance of our manuscript. We totally agree with your comments and improvements, and followed you in improving our manuscript. The improvements for your comments are as follows;
‧Please check the entire manuscript carefully for typographical errors.
I checked the entire manuscript carefully again, and English was proofread by a native speaker.
‧I recommend updating the bibliography.
I added the new references.
‧It would have been interesting for the authors to compare with other adsorbent materials used to Pb (II), Cu(II) and Zn(II) remove.
The comparison with other adsorbent for Pb(II) and its explanation were added into the manuscript. Additionally, the adsorption for Cu(II) and Zn(II) wrote in the text for Figure of pH dependence.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This short communication by Wajima et al. aims to assess the adsorption of Pb(II) onto oil-ash derived adsorbents through both sulfur impregnation and pyrolisis at various temperatures.
The scope of the manuscript is of interest for the readership of Processes. However, the general quality of the manuscript is clearly insufficient for publication.
(i) the language of the manuscript needs to be corrected by a professional translator as several sentences are very hard to understand,
(ii) you cite only 10 references, and exclusively in the introduction, it is not serious,
(iii) in fact, point (ii) illustrates the complete lack of discussion in this manuscript as the author only comments the figures without any scientific discussion or comparison with other studies. It looks like a technical report. For example, you must explain (in one sentence) why only K2SO4 for Ash-KOH, draw assumption for the best adsorption capacity at 300°C, etc. Here you comment without explain...
(iv) It misses information on Figures 6 and 7 as the results of Ash-K2S and Ash-KOH are not displayed,
(v) The adsorption experiments are not at all sufficient, for the isotherm you only tested 4 concentrations, without reaching a potentiel adsorption capacity. This is below all the standards. As well, data were fitted with Langmuir and Freundlich equations, however, you only provide R² values and Qmax from Langmuir. This is one more time insufficient. What is the assumption associated to the fact that Langmuir fit is better than Freundlich one?
(vi) What is the assumption associated to the increase of Pb and Cu removal on increasing the pH value??
The author should therefore completely rewrite this manuscript before it would deserve for publication. As consequence, i recommend to reject this manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you for considering the acceptance of our manuscript. We totally agree with your comments and improvements, and followed you in improving our manuscript. The improvements for your comments are as follows;
(i) the language of the manuscript needs to be corrected by a professional translator as several sentences are very hard to understand,
I checked the entire manuscript carefully again, and English was proofread by a native speaker.
(ii) you cite only 10 references, and exclusively in the introduction, it is not serious,
I added the new references.
(iii) in fact, point (ii) illustrates the complete lack of discussion in this manuscript as the author only comments the figures without any scientific discussion or comparison with other studies. It looks like a technical report. For example, you must explain (in one sentence) why only K2SO4 for Ash-KOH, draw assumption for the best adsorption capacity at 300°C, etc. Here you comment without explain...
I added the discussion for synthesis mechanism using Figs. 1-6.
(iv) It misses information on Figures 6 and 7 as the results of Ash-K2S and Ash-KOH are not displayed,
The results of Ash-K2S and Ash-KOH are indicated at the left corner of figures. To avoid missing the results, the sentence “It is noted that the results of Ash-K2S and Ash-KOH are plotted at the origin.” was added in the text.
(v) The adsorption experiments are not at all sufficient, for the isotherm you only tested 4 concentrations, without reaching a potential adsorption capacity. This is below all the standards. As well, data were fitted with Langmuir and Freundlich equations, however, you only provide R² values and Qmax from Langmuir. This is one more time insufficient. What is the assumption associated to the fact that Langmuir fit is better than Freundlich one?
I added the detail information for isotherm.
(vi) What is the assumption associated to the increase of Pb and Cu removal on increasing the pH value??
I added the reference and explanation for this adsorption mechanism.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for revising the manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
The author has made significant modifications on its manuscript following the reviewer' advise. Even if i remain not fully covinced about the novelty and potential of this manuscript, it now looks like a real scientific paper and deserves for publication. I regret the fact that not any point in the discussion is supported by the cited references which are only used to compare the adsorption capacities of other adsorbents. It also remains several typos that must be corrected before publication. Yet, i think that this manuscript is now suitable for publication.
