Wood Gasification: A Promising Strategy to Extend Fuel Reserves after Global Catastrophic Electricity Loss
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAuthors introduced electromagnetic pulse events which could destroy infrastructures that relied on large scale electrical devices, e.g., refining and mining equipment. Therefore, fossil fuel supply will be suspended. Authors analyzed the effect of retrofitting vehicles with wood gasifiers to prolong fuel reserve and maintaining food production.
1. Please modify the format of numbers presented in line 4 and 7 in Abstract.
2. The introduction of global EMP is too much. Introduction of the gasifier device on vehicle is needed e.g., working principle, required size of wood feedstocks, efficiency (e.g., how many miles/pounds biomass), safety hazards etc.
3. Authors do not consider the time to convert diesel engines for being used with syngas as presented in section 2.4 is not convincing. I believe the manufacture of suitable engines is one of the limiting steps especially under global electricity loss.
4. Authors please comment on why not just using steam-powered vehicles that people had more experience with.
Author Response
Thank you for your reviews. I've updated the paper to include your suggestions. The highlighted sections are the ones which have been changed. The updated paper is attached and can be viewed at the link below.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8x8u4k0wlamvaljunbnsj/Gasification_Paper_Response_to_Reviewers.pdf?rlkey=hnp658qqvv4a0sqjpevy7bikt&dl=0
Please modify the format of the numbers presented in line 4 and 7 of the the abstract.
The numbers have been replaced by "between 158 days and 481 days with 80% confidence with the mean being 195 days" and "between 382 days and 1501 days with 80% confidence and the mean being at 757 days".
The introduction of global EMP is too much. Introduction of the gasifier device on vehicle is needed. EG working principle, required size of wood feedstocks, efficiency (eg how many miles/pounds biomass per kilometer), safety hazards, etc.
We have condensed four paragraphs discussing EMPs into one. We have added a subsection in the introduction that discusses the working principle, feedstock, mileage and safety concerns relating to gasification devices.
Authors do not consider the time to convert diesel engines for being used with syngas as presented in section 2.4 is not convincing. I believe the manufacture of suitable engines is one of the limiting steps especially under global electricity loss.
Modelling the conversion of diesel engines or replacement with gasoline engines resulted in the uncertainties in the Monte Carlo analysis to grow too large to produce meaningful results. Minimising these uncertainties was assigned to the work of a future paper as we have now stated in the newly created conclusion. However, even with this limiting assumption of no diesel conversion/replacement and just running on ~80% wood gas working against it, the wood gasification strategy still performed very well against the business as usual case.
We did not consider the manufacture of new engines as the high tolerances of engine manufacturing require complex supply chains that are likely to be extremely disrupted due to the global catastrophic infrastructure loss.
Authors please comment on why not just using steam powered vehicles that people had more experience with?
We have now addressed steam engines in the introduction. We did consider manufacturing steam engines but they are unfortunately not viable in this scenario. Steam engines require tolerances in the tenths to hundredth millimetre range and it is expected that the catastrophe will damage a significant fraction of the equipment that is able to manufacture to that precision. Perhaps you meant using existing steam powered vehicles - there are around several hundred steam engines in operation mostly as tourist trains and they are not enough to solve transport problems.
In comparison gasification devices only require tolerances in the millimetre to centimetre range and thus can be manufactured by hand using acetylene welding equipment. No electricity is needed.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors1. The motivation and contribution and novelty of this paper should be stated more clearly in the abstract to better understand from the beginning of the study.
2. The manuscript is contains irrelevant, unnecessary information. Consider changing the structure of the manuscript (introduction, literature review, methodology- proposed approach, results, conclusion). The novelty and significance of this work must be highlighted.
3. The introduction section should be reorganized to point out the limitations of our current knowledge clearly, and also the scientific goal and contribution of this study.
4. Where are the conclusions? Conclusions should be SHORT section at end that refers back to your research question and methodology. Comment on whether you have accomplished goal, and any limitations and further research directions required.
5. Sentences related to Monte Carlo analysis should be relocated to the Methods section. Please explain in more detail what research method you used and how you calculated the data.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor editing of English language required.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our paper. I have updated the paper in light of your suggestions. The highlighted sections show what has been changed from the first submission. The updated paper is attached and can also be viewed at this link
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8x8u4k0wlamvaljunbnsj/Gasification_Paper_Response_to_Reviewers.pdf?rlkey=hnp658qqvv4a0sqjpevy7bikt&dl=0
The motivation and contribution and novelty of this paper should be stated more clearly in the abstract to better understand from the beginning of the study.
We have rewritten the abstract to explicitly state the motivation to be a "the growing concerns relating to factors that could cause global catastrophic infrastructure loss such as nuclear war or a worldwide pandemic" (lines 2 and 3).
We have also rewritten the abstract to explicitly point out the novel aspect of the paper to be "This paper investigates a novel group of interventions in relation to the scenario of providing food under these conditions. It was found that by using a plausible combination of wood gasification, increasing vehicle utilisation rate and reducing food consumption the stockpile duration could increase to between 382 days and 1501 days with 90% confidence where the mean is at 757 days." (lines 7 to 11)
The manuscript contains irrelevant, unnecessary information. Consider changing the structure of the manuscript (introduction literature review, methodology - proposed approach, results, conclusion). The novelty and significance of this work must be highlighted.
We have changed the structure of the manuscript to be abstract, introduction, methodology, results and conclusion. We have emphasised the novelty and significance more in the abstract and conclusion.
The introduction section should be reorganised to point out the imitations of our current knowledge clearly and also the scientific goal and contribution of this study.
We have reduced section 1.2 to reduce unnecessary context about HEMP. We added a section in the introduction to provide more context about gasification devices.
Where are the conclusions? Conclusions should be SHORT section at the end that refers back to your research question and methodology. Comment on whether you have accomplished the goal, and any limitations and further research directions required.
We have added a conclusion section which states the accomplished goal, important findings and possible directions for future work. This is done in a little over 150 words.
Sentences related to Monte Carlo analysis should be relocated to the Methods section. Please explain in more detail what research method you used and how you calculated the data
We added a statistical analysis subsection at the end of the methodology section that explains in more detail the approach using Monte Carlo analysis.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI don't have further comments on this revised manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript has been sufficiently improved to warrant publication in Biomass. Congratulations!
