Molecular Simulation Study on the Microscopic Structure and Mechanical Property of Defect-Containing sI Methane Hydrate

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript reports a very interesting study on the local order and mechanical properties of methane hydrate during the decomposition process. In particular, by means of a proper MD simulation study the influence of defects on the microscopic structure and mechanical property of the sI methane hydrate system was investigated. In such a way the stress-strain curve of each system was analyzed, by discovering that the presence of some defects could promote the system mechanical properties.

I happy happy after a care reading of the manuscript to state that it is a good expression of the author work in the field. The paper reports significant findings, it is well written and certainly will be of interest for the community working in the related fields.

For these reasons this study deserves in my opinion the publication on the Int. J. of Molecular Sciences.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Molecular Simulation Study on the Microscopic Structure and Mechanical Property of Defect-containing sI Methane Hydrate” (ijms-484442). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. The English in the revision has been checked carefully, and we have had the manuscript polished with a  native English speaking colleague.

We appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

With kind regards,

Sen Tian 

Corresponding author

Reviewer 2 Report

This is surely an interesting and original work. It has the potential to be published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. I have only a couple of comments that the authors should implement into the revised manuscript prior to publication.

1) 2. Results and Discussions - In the discussion, the authors should link their results to the literature results, where appropriate.

2) 4. Conclusions - The practical impact of the results obtained in this work should be better highlighted. The authors should also give an outlook on future research work.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Molecular Simulation Study on the Microscopic Structure and Mechanical Property of Defect-containing sI Methane Hydrate” (ijms-484442). The comments from the reviewer 2 have been carefully concerned and addressed in the revision. The revised parts are marked as red color in the revision. Please find the “comments and corresponding response” below.

Point 1: Results and Discussions - In the discussion, the authors should link their results to the literature results, where appropriate.

Response 1: Done. Thank you very much for you suggestion. We had linked our results to the reported results in the revised paper, please see the revision (in page 3, line 9-10; page 5, line 4-5).

Point 2: Conclusions - The practical impact of the results obtained in this work should be better highlighted. The authors should also give an outlook on future research work.

        Response 2: Done. The practical impact of the results has been briefly addressed in the revision, and we have re-written this part according to the Reviewer’s suggestion. Since the actual methane hydrate usually contains lattice defect or cavity and other impurities, the phenomenon and conclusions drawn in this study provide a basis for the study of the microscopic structure, mechanical characteristics and practical exploitation of methane hydrate. Moreover, the structure properties and microscopic mechanism of the defect-containing hydrate will be further studied, and the experimental verification will be conducted in our future research work.

  please see the revision (in page 7, line 22-29). Thank you for picking them up.

We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

With kind regards,

Sen Tian 

Corresponding author