Modeling Challenges for Improving the Heat Rate Performance in a Thermal Power Plant: Implications for SDGs in Energy Supply Chains

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript can be accepted for publication after major revisions, see the followings:

*The introduction should be improved (The literature review is weak).
*English should be improved.
*The Abstract should be improved.
*The References should be updated.

*The novelty of this article is not clear. Please more explain it.
*Better description and explanation of tables 4 to 6.
*There are some typing errors and inaccuracies in the manuscript. Please, check the paper again for any possible misprints.

*The quality of tables should be improved.

* The conclusion should be improved.
* The following references could be included in this manuscript:

[1] Sibuea, M. B., Sibuea, S. R., & Pratama, I. (2021). The impact of renewable energy and economic development on environmental quality of ASEAN countries. AgBioForum, 23(1), 12-21

[2] Adebayo, T. S., Rjoub, H., Akinsola, G. D., & Oladipupo, S. D. (2022). The asymmetric effects of renewable energy consumption and trade openness on carbon emissions in Sweden: new evidence from quantile-on-quantile regression approach. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 29(2), 1875-1886.

[3] Adebayo, T. S., Awosusi, A. A., Rjoub, H., Agyekum, E. B., & Kirikkaleli, D. (2022). The influence of renewable energy usage on consumption-based carbon emissions in MINT economies. Heliyon, e08941. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e08941

[4] Vedad, N. (2022). Identifying and Prioritizing Factors Affecting Sustainable Social Responsibility in a Private Mobile Operator Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Techniques. Tehnički glasnik, 16(1), 1-7.

[5] Omar, H. A. M. B. B., Ali, M., & Jaharadak, A. (2019). Green supply chain integrations and corporate sustainability. Uncertain Supply Chain Management, 7(4), 713-726.

*I hope that the authors refer to more published papers in Sustainability.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 is attached as file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

SUMMARY

The paper considered the problem of improving the heat rate performance of thermal power plants. Twenty-two challenges in improving the heat rate performance were identified and discussed with the experts and analyzed using the grey-DEMATEL technique to capture the relationship among the challenges and challenges' influences. The study has a practical value; the article describes the methodology used and its results in detail. However, there are comments on the presentation of intermediate results and the novelty of the conclusions.

COMMENTS

1. It is not clear why the brief description of the three articles [11, 16, 16] was placed in Table 1.
2. Notation system B1-B22 is awkward since it is hard to remember. Maybe it's better to use not numbers, but short abbreviations (B_fau - Fly ash unburned carbon content; B_bau - Bottom ash unburned carbon content, etc.)? It's just a suggestion.
3. It is recommended to compare the results of the used grey-DEMATEL technique with results obtained by other methods. 
4. What is the conclusion of sensitivity analysis? Table 6 provides calculation results, but there is no discussion of them in the article.
5. There is no explanation about Figure 1 in the text. The caption "Figure 1. Framework of the study" is unclear.
6. Table 6 is simply unreadable. It can be divided into several tables. In addition, there is a typo in the table name: "sensitivty" instead of "sensitivity."  
7. Section "7. Conclusion" contains mainly a listing of what was done and a description of the future study. The authors identified only one concrete conclusion: "The findings indicate that air preheater leakage, coal flow balancing, and air heater air outlet temperature are the crucial challenges in improving the heat performance of CBTPPs." (lines 330-332). How new is this result relative to existing research? 
8. Please, pay more attention to the new conclusions and the possible application of the obtained results in Section 7. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 is attached as file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This article can be accepted.

Author Response

Response is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors added the required explanations and supplements to the manuscript. However, the lack of comparison with other methods of evaluating the challenges remains a weak point of the work.

Author Response

Response is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf