PONE-D-20-01902

Role of ambient pressure in self-heating torrefaction of dairy cattle manure

PLOS ONE

Dear Prof. Iwabuchi,

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1. Thank you for including your competing interests statement; "This study received financial support from Tanigurogumi Corporation, Japan. T.I. has been an employee of Tanigurogumi Corporation, Japan, since April 2019. There is no further employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, and marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials."

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The manuscript is missing critical important information which must be added before the manuscript can be considered for publication. The use of replicate for the data presented as well as how the data was statistically analyzed must be present. Otherwise the manuscript is written in very good English and it is very easy to follow and understand. The only drawback is the methodology section missing the above mentioned info.

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

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

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Reviewer #1: No

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

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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: Title: Role of ambient pressure in self-heating torrefaction of dairy cattle manure

Author: Takanori Itoh, Kazunori Iwabuchi, Naohiro Maemoku, Katsumori Taniguro

Manuscript ID: PONE-D-20-01902

Overall Comments:

This research investigated the effect of ambient pressure in self-heating torrefaction of livestock manure. Truly, this paper is a well written article, easy to follow, and showed sequential flow of information, and the authors have demonstrated good knowledge of the overall problem. This is a nice piece of work and can be published after incorporating the following comments.

Principal Comments:

Material and Methods section is short and lacking sufficient information. Authors are strongly advised to include name of all standard methods (ASTM- American Society for Testing and Materials) followed to perform ultimate and proximate analyses along with a very brief description of the measurement methods and instruments used. Example are as follows:

Standard Methods Instruments/ Model Measurement methods

Proximate

Volatile Matter ASTM D7582 Leco TGA 701 Thermogravimetric Analyzer Mass loss (% dry basis) of the specimen when heated at 950ºC in presence of oxidizing gas for 2 h.

Heating Value

(Calorific Value) ASTM D5865 Parr 6200 Calorimeter, Parr Instruments (Moline, IL, USA) Oxygen bomb calorimeter

Statistical analysis: A small section of statistical methods and analysis should be included. Nothing is mentioned about replications whether samples were replicated or duplication or subsamples. To publish this article, sample should be duplicated. This is major drawback of this article.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Role of ambient pressure in self-heating torrefaction of dairy cattle manure

PONE-D-20-01902R1

Dear Dr. Iwabuchi,

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.

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With kind regards,

Paulo H. Pagliari

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

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 #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 #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)

Reviewer #2: The manuscript has scientific interest because the used torrefaction system, which uses the heat generated from the chemical oxidation of manure, is a new approach.

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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 #2: Yes: Dr.Jale YANIK