Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments: In this study, exergy transfer and microwave heating performances of wheat straw particles as affected by microwave power (250, 300, and 350 W), feeding load (10, 30, and 50 g), and particle size (0.058, 0.106, and 0.270 mm) were investigated and detailed. The work is interesting and is also well organized and presented. Some minor comments or/and suggestions were raised after the review of this manuscript.

1. The statement “no scholars have studied the exergy transfer of the heating process of wheat straw particles during microwave heating process” justifies the main novelty of this study. Why have no scholars studied the exergy transfer of the heating process of wheat straw particles during microwave heating process?

2. For the exergy analysis in section 2.4, there are Ex₁, Ex₆, and Ex₆, no the others. If these are modified. The exergy transfer efficiency in equation (6) should also be revised.

3. References should be checked and well formatted.

Author Response

Please find the attached file for your reference. Thanks!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the article is interesting, however, major revision should be needed before it can be published.

1 The introduction should be improved, since the processing of heating to about 250 ^oC under the irradiation of microwave is just the beginning stage of microwave pyrolysis of biomass, the meaning, the significance of this study needs to be further clarified.

2 It seems that the experiments were stopped when the temperature of the system was heated to about 250 ^oC? Why? The pyrolysis temperature of biomass is much higher than this, like 600-800 ^oC, then why don’t test the following heating process?

3 Since this is a process optimization experiment, more processing conditions should be tested, and response surface method or orthogonal experiment should be applied.

4 Discussion should be greatly improved, e.g line 227-228: These were due to the facts that with ……, it doesn’t make any sense, it’s like “this result is due to the fact of this result”.

Author Response

Please find the attached file for your reference. Thanks!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1. Eq(6) is wrong due to Ex_1 not being equal to exergy input. 

2.Figures 3, 6, 8, 9, 11 are missed.

The microwave-assisted processes for biomass have been well developed in the past decade. In this study, the exergy transfer efficiency is added to evaluate this heating process. In fact, the net exergy efficiency is an important index to evaluate the energy recovery and check the proportion of the net output exergy that is further utilized in the total input exergy. Unfortunately, this approach is missed in this study. 

Author Response

Please find the attached file for your reference. Thanks!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf