PONE-D-19-29053

Essential Oil-Incorporated Carbon Nanotubes Filters for Bacterial Removal and Inactivation

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yang,

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Amitava Mukherjee, ME, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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Reviewer #1: 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: The authors presented a new antimicrobial material, essential oil-incorporated CNT and studied its disinfection efficiency against bacteria. The manuscript provided enough scientific results and abundant discussion. It can be considered to accept for publication after the authors address the following questions.

1. The authors used two quantitative methods for bacterial counting: cell removal rate and inactivation efficiency. The description is clear in the Materials and Methods part. However, in the Results and Discussion, multiple different names are used, especially in the figures, such as "log10 of E.coli cell number", "bacterial removal rate", "inhibition rate", and "rate of NaCl tolerance cells". Please clarify or clearly mark how these numbers are measured (by cell removal rate or inactivation efficiency).

2. In figure 1, the authors uses "log" to present the inactivation by CNT independently. In the following figures, the authors uses "%", which indicates a lower removal/inactivation efficiency. So is this meaning that the incorporation of essential oil decreases the inactivation efficiency and hinder the antimicrobial power of CNT?

3. The treatment capacity (flow rate) is pretty low in this study. Can the authors indicate the potential applications of this material?

4. When discussing the bacterial morphological change under different antimicrobial materials, the authors could consider to include the following references:

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2018,6, 18813-18820

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2009.07.052

Environ. Sci. Technol. 2019, 53, 13, 7504-7512

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Reviewer #1: No

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Essential Oil-Incorporated Carbon Nanotubes Filters for Bacterial Removal and Inactivation

PONE-D-19-29053R1

Dear Dr. Yang,

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.

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With kind regards,

Amitava Mukherjee, ME, Ph.D.

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

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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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