PONE-D-19-21511

Study on Co-Combustion of Coal Gangue and Polyvinyl Chloride

PLOS ONE

Dear Mr. Gao,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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ACADEMIC EDITOR: 

• The novelty of the work must be further elaborated and highlighted in the paper.
• English must be improved. There are typos and grammatical errors in the text which need to be amended. 
• What is the advantage of the PVC implemented in the present work in comparison with the other co-combusting agents?
• Provide state-of-the-art in the area by reviewing more relevant works. 

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We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Oct 03 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dr M. M. Sarafraz

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1- English must be reviewed and typos should be removed from the text. In its present form, there are grammatical errors, which need to be amended.

2- Introduction is superficial and authors are expected to reflect the novelty of the work, quality of their research. They have to show what has not been done in the literature and what would be the contribution of their work to the existing knowledge.

3- What is the novelty of the work? Any novelty in the methodology, mechanism of the experiment or modelling?

4- Abstract is full of abbreviation. It needs to be amended.

5- Part of this study is to conduct a series of experiments on co-combustion of coal and PVC. However, authors did not discuss the uncertainty and reliability of the devices, instruments and measurements in the paper. This is an experimental work and uncertainty analysis is heart of such a study. Discuss more about the accuracy of the sensors and systems.

6- Information in Table 2: why heating range is limited to 1000 C? What if temperature is ramped to 1500 C?

7- Any reactions between the crucible, moisture of the air with coal and PVC? How can it be identified?

8- Fig. 3a: What is the main reason for the fluctuation seen for heating rate 4C/min. This fluctuation is not seen for other heating rates.

9- Is Kissinger free model a suitable kinetic development model for this study?

Facing the above comments, my decision is major revision. Authors should highlight the novelty clearly in the text.

Reviewer #2: Commenting "Study on Co-Combustion of Coal Gangue and Polyvinyl Chloride"

1- English and writing style of the paper is weak. Authors must improve the quality of writing of this manuscript.

2- The aim and objective of this work is not clear. What authors are trying to address? What is the novelty of this work in comparison with the other papers?

3- The text is full of abbreviations and some of them have not been defined in the text. This must be corrected through out the manuscript.

4- Why there is a special focus on PVC as co-agent in the combustion of coal? What about other mixing agents? The advantage of PVC is not clear in the text.

5- Reliability calculations is required for the numbers and values reported in the paper. Moffat method could be one potential way to report the errors associated with the values reported in the paper.

6- Test rig or schematic diagram of the system used in the present research must be shown in the paper.

7- The methodology used in this work is not novel, thereby authors should justify the contribution of this work to the existing knowledge.

8- Conversion calculated in the present work must be compared to other combustion routes to evaluate the chemical performance of the co-combustion of coal and PVC.

9- Authors should discuss the level of oxygen available in the system. How far from the stoichiometric level?

10- CO2/CO ratio and ash analysis is required for the proposed system.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Thermogravimetric analysis of the co-combustion of coal and polyvinyl chloride

PONE-D-19-21511R1

Dear Dr. Gao,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

With kind regards,

Mason Sarafraz

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No