Gasification of Lignocellulosic Waste in Supercritical Water: Study of Thermodynamic Equilibrium as a Nonlinear Programming Problem

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript concerns supercritical water gasification of lignocellulosic wastes. Thermodynamic models were applied to evaluate the process. Used methodologies were validated using experimental data from the literature. The present study did not include experiments. The article has a high scientific level. Besides, the methodology used was described in great detail. The results obtained and the conclusions are also clear and well-described.

However, the article needs minor revision before publication. My comments are listed below:

1. Line 9 – should be “in” instead of “into”

2. Abstract should indicate what is new in relation to previous studies

3. Lines 32-37 – the sentence is too long, thus unclear. Please break it down into a few shorter ones

4. Line 43 – the sentence is unclear. What do you mean by glucose and ethanol chain? Other production chains?

5. Equation 5 – C6H12O6 is not a lignin formula – please correct.

6. Line 218 – there is a mistake in “lignocellulose” – please correct

7. Please write Latin names of microorganisms in italics

8. Fig 2. The values on Y-axis are not shown in percent – please correct them to make consistent with the axis title

9. Line 338 – what data presents the value <5x10-4? Unit is necessary

10. Line 411 – the abbreviation was explained before. There is no need to explain it again.

11. Fig.7 – Fonts are too small and difficult to read. Please enlarge them.

12. Line 464-468 – lo long sentence. Please break it down.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your support.
We comply with all the notes indicated. Below is the response letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article studied the SCWG processes of lignocellulosic residues using Gibbs energy minimization and entropy maximization approach for reactor evaluation. The paper needs to be further modified and enriched.

1. What are the advantages for thermodynamic models based on Gibbs energy minimization and entropy maximization methods?

2. What are the inputs in the thermodynamic approach? Biomass? Temperature? Atmosphere? The details were missing.

3. The expressions in manuscript should maintain unity. Figure 6 and Fig.4-5. Please check the whole manuscript and correct.

4. Line 436, the husk SCWG process presents higher rates of synthesis gas formation, but indicated the potential of liquid fuels production? Why?

5. The conclusion should highlight the most important insights instead of retelling the experimental results.

  6. For the topic of the gasification of waste, the author should cite the paper to strengthen the explanation of the research. Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis 179 (2024) 106442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaap.2024.106442

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your support.
We comply with all the notes indicated. Below is the response letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

For the topic of the gasification of waste, the author should cite the paper to strengthen the explanation of the research. Pyrolysis of hydrothermally dewatering sewage sludge: Highly efficient peroxydisulfate activation of derived biochar to degrade diclofenac

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 
As we pointed out, we included the reference. I discovered a common comparative point between both approaches.

Thank you for your collaboration.