Multifunctional Carbon-Based Hybrid Foams for Shape-Stabilization of Phase Change Materials, Thermal Energy Storage, and Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Functions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title:  Carbon-Based Hybrid Foams for Thermal Energy Storage and EMI Shielding Applications

Authors: Christina Gioti, Anastasios Karakassides, Georgios Asimakopoulos, Maria Baikousi, Constantinos E. Salmas, Zacharias Viskadourakis, George Kenanakis, and Michael A. Karakassides,

 The authors carried out an experimental study to synthesise the carbon-red mud foam/paraffin hybrid materials. The following are the major quires and suggestions are needed to be addressed to improve the quality of the manuscript:

·         Abstract needs to be improved with critical information and important findings. Please improve the abstract with more technical information.

·         Problem definition is not properly explained. WHY are you conducting this study? WHAT are the significant differences between your proposed method and previous studies? HOW do you claim that your proposed method is a better improvement than previous results?

·         Improve the literature review with the latest studies. The literature review is not systematically presented. Rewrite the literature with key information.

·         There is no significant novelty and objectives mentioned in the current study.

·         Mention the mass concentration range and the ratio of carbon, mud foam and paraffin clearly. Provide the optimum values of enthalpy of melting and solidification in the abstract.

·         Provide the thermophysical properties of each raw material in tabular form with reference.

·         Provide the thermal conductivity results. The testing description is very less. How many numbers of tests did you run for each sample? Did you calculate the error?

·         How many times did you run each sample? Did you find out the uncertainties in the results?

·         The discussion of the results is not well technically written. There is a critical need to extend the discussion scientifically. Authors need to enhance the quality of the figures.

·         The thermal conductivity results are not found. I would recommend adding the thermal conductivity results with temperature variations.

·         Conclusion section should be improved with more critical results and suggestions. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The paper reports about a quite complex preparative route  for materials finally presenting interesting EMI-shielding behaviour.

The characterization of the prepared composites is complete and detailed , but the paper lacks an section devoted to speculation providing new insights about the materials which are conceptually not innovative apart some preparative aspects. Also a comparison with similar products in terms of properties should be considered .

1.The title  should be  more strictly connected to the paper real content.

2.The introduction is  too long and describe w ell known literature paper and many of the described data re already present in  reference 11) , that is a review on the basic argument published in 2021 !. A shorter and more synthetic  state of art should replace the actual long  description.

3.The last sense of the introduction , normally  devoted to the scientific motivation of the paper , is here a detailed  abstract of the work reported in the following pages of the ms.

4.The acronym RM is used without an extended explanation to added at the first mention.

5.The preparation method of the hybrid foams is described with many details  , but it looks quite complicated and  subjected to  handling without a rigorous reproducible methodology. Are the results of different preparations  consistent ?

6.The sense on page 8 lines 274-276  “It is clear, from the comparison of x-ray patterns of CRMFoam-5 and CRMFoam-2.5 274 samples, that the higher used heating temperature as well as the greater RM concentration 275 in preform CRMFoam-2.5, favoured the formation of iron carbide phases.” , is absolutely unclear to me. My be I did understand something but the explanation looks complex and not so plain.

7.With reference to the previous comment :Also what is the mechanism for iron carbide formation ?

8.Page 8,line 278……Figure 2 should call Figure 4,,,,

9.he mechanical test of fig 5 are not very well represented and the results are very trivial . To what aim are these data reported.

10.Page 11 line 372 …..42°C should probably read 420°c !

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Title: Carbon-Based Hybrid Foams for Thermal Energy Storage and 2EMI Shielding Applications

This paper is a very well written content which needs some  improvements before acceptance for publication.

 

Specific Comments:

1. We need to know further on the RAMAN spectra.  The analysis does not show any peaks for metal oxides and we need to know why they were not identified.  Please see reference Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:9913 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66929-3

2.  Certainly there is a need to compare the XRD and RAMAN to have a rationale on the composition and the peak shift in RAMAN.

3.  There are some minor typo error as Figure 4 is referred as Figure 2.

4. It would be good to label the pore sizes and the wall in the Figure 1. 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for sending me the manuscript for reviewing the revised version. The authors have almost all the comments requested in the previous revision. However, there are some minor typo mistakes, please check Thus, my recommendation is to accept the manuscript for publication in Micro.

Reviewer 2 Report

I thanks the authors for thier effort to clarify my oints; they did  it to an accepatable level so I can agree about publication of the present paper in the revised version

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has modified as per my suggestion and so is ready to get accepted.