Sustainable Retrofitting Solutions: Evaluating the Performance of Jute Fiber Nets and Composite Mortar in Natural Fiber Textile Reinforced Mortars

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper entitled "Sustainable Retrofitting Solutions: Evaluating the Performance of Jute Fiber Nets and Composite Mortar in Natural Fiber Textile Reinforced Mortars" can be reconsider for publication, however a major revision is required. Please see comments bellow:

Keywords are similar to highlight, reformulate.

There are major errors in the formatting of the references.

The novelty of the paper is unclear. How does this work stand out in relation to the literature? What are the hypotheses?

How do the authors think about the scaling and automation process, is there already a technology that could be applied?

"During the mixture preparation, the pre-present aggregates were separated from the mortar, and thereafter 12.5% recycled jute net fibers were mixed with the dry mortar mass."  This proportion is confusing. reformulate.

Line 253 up to 284. Revise and completely reformulate this text. It is necessary to have a clear discussion, highlighting positive and negative points fundamental discussions.

Fig. 10 and 11 should go to supplementary material

 Extensive editing of English language required. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable time and for his/her important suggestions to improve the manuscript. The authors have enhanced the quality of the manuscript and have addressed almost all suggestions and issues highlighted by the reviewer. Please find the PDF file attached with our replies.

Kind regards,

Arnas Majumder, Flavio Stochino, Andrea Frattolillo, Monica Valdes, Gianluca Gatto and Enzo Martinelli

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting research. Concisely written. Suggestions for improving the manuscript are as follows:

1. The error "Error! Reference source not found" appears in several places in the text. I ask the authors to solve this problem.

2. In the penultimate paragraph of the Introduction section, emphasize the scientific contribution of this research.

3. Why are the inner mesh configurations 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm and (2) 2.5 cm x 1.25 cm?

4. Is it possible to assess the negative impact on the environment?

5. In the conclusions, emphasize the limitations of the research and future research.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable time and for his/her important suggestions to improve the manuscript. The authors have enhanced the quality of the manuscript and have addressed almost all suggestions and issues highlighted by the reviewer. Please find the PDF file attached with our replies.

Kind regards,

Arnas Majumder, Flavio Stochino, Andrea Frattolillo, Monica Valdes, Gianluca Gatto and Enzo Martinelli

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript titled “Sustainable Retrofitting Solutions: Evaluating the Performance of Jute Fiber Nets and Composite Mortar in Natural Fiber Textile Reinforced Mortars” by Majumder, A.; et al. is a scientific work where the authors assess the mechanical and thermal conductivity properties of mortar composites made of recycled jute fibers. The authors found an increase of the mechanical performance and energy absorbance capabilities combined with better insulation response according to previous reported works.

However, it exists some points that need to be addressed (please, see them below detailed point-by-point). The most relevant outcomes found by the authors can contribute in the smart design of the next-generation of sustainable materials susceptible to be employed in many fields with special focus on building & construction sectors. For this reason, I will recommend the present scientific manuscript for further publication in Sustainability once all the below described suggestions will be properly fixed.

Here, there exists some points that must be covered in order to improve the scientific quality of the manuscript paper:

1) ABSTRACT. “This paper presents (…) (mesh configurations “2.5 cm x 2.5 cm” and “2.5 cm x 1.25 cm”) (…)” (lines 18-19). Please, the authors should homogenize the significant figures. This point should be taken into account for the rest of the main manuscript body text.

Then, (OPTIONAL) “(…) Natural Fiber Textil Reinforced Mortars (NFTRM) (…)” (lines 20-21). The authors should consider to state the full-name of the employed techniques in lowercase letters. Same comment for the rest of used approached by the authors in this research: “Recycle Jute Fiber Composite Mortar” (lines 23-24), “Thermal Conductivity” (line 24), “Construction & Building” (line 37), among others. Only the case of “European Union” in line 42 should remain in capital letters.

2) KEYWORDS. (OPTIONAL) “thermal insulation capacity of the jute fiber composite mortar” (lines 33-34). The authors should consider to add a term related to the mechanical properties of the jute fiber composite mortars (as devoted for the thermal conductivity performance of this type of composites) in the keyword list.

3) INTRODUCTION. “Notably, in the EU building stocks (…) highest producers of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (…) 39% globally and 36% in the EU (…) C&B sector (…) 36% globally and 40% in the EU of the total produced energy” (lines 52-57). Even if I agree with this statement provided by the authors it may be neccesary to highlight the importance of carefully monitor the carbon footprint in the Industrial sector by life cycle assessment (LCA) strategies.

4) “It is well established that natural fibers (…) banana TRM” (lines 74-98). First, the authors should fix the following statement “Error! Reference source not found” in line 86 (same comment for the lines 176-177). Finally, these paragraphs evidence the important of plant-based fibers (specially jute) in the building sector. However, the authors need to remark the importance of jute fiber composites for other applications like food packaging increasing their interfacial adhesion properties with the polymer matrix [1] or as reinforcement materials improving their mechanical properties [2].

[1] https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16062440

[2] https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15197032

5) MATERIALS & METHODS. “2.1. Jute fiber net preparation” (lines 133-157). Did the authors chemically characterized the jute fibers used in this research? Some information needs to be furnished in this regard.

6) Linked with the above described point, what was the ageing time of the used jute fibers? This is a key point to consider since the mechanical properties of these plant fibers can significantly vary according to this factor.

7) “where Q = heat (…) under test in m2” (lines 219-221). Please, the authors should indicate the square meters with superscript.  

8) Figure 9 (line 227). The standard deviation (SD) values of the scanned thermal conductivity should be added in this figure for the tested tempetures.

9) RESULTS. Linked with the aforementioned point, the SD values of the measured physical parameters of the tested samples as the mechanical properties (Table 2 in line 252 or the Fig. 12 in line 305) and the thermal conductivity (Table 3 in the line 335)  must be detailed.

10) “Subsequently, the fiber scraps during the net fabrication and post-tensile test failed (…) were recycled to prepare the jute net fiber composite mortar (…) thermal conductivity value of these samples was estimated” (lines 236-238). Did the authors consider that the previous processing of jute fibers could affect to the measured thermal conductivity of the jute composite mortar samples? Did the authors measure the thermal conductivity of these composites made of native (non-recycled) jute fibers? Did the authors observe any thermal conductivity difference between the mortar composites made of raw and recycled jute fibers? A brief statement should be provided in these regards.

11)  Figure 10 (line 289) and Figure 11 (line 295). The lettering caption of each tensile force displacement measurements should be changed by adding points instead of commas. For example, the sample indicated in the Fig. 10 panel (a) should be named “N_2.5_3” instead of “N_2,5_3”.

12) CONCLUSIONS. This section perfectly shows the most relevant outcomes found in this research. The authors should point out some potential future action lines to pursue this research. Additionally, it may be also convenient to detail some extra Industrial application apart from the construction sector (lines 365-367) as previosly commented in the point 4). Finally, the references are in the proper format according to the journal guidelines. No actions are requested from the authors to this latest point.

The manuscript is generally well-written. However, it may be advisable if the authors could recheck it in order to polish those final details susceptible to be improved (please, read the reviewing report notes).

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable time and for his/her important suggestions to improve the manuscript. The authors have enhanced the quality of the manuscript and have addressed almost all suggestions and issues highlighted by the reviewer. Please the PDF file attached with our replies.

Kind regards,

Arnas Majumder, Flavio Stochino, Andrea Frattolillo, Monica Valdes, Gianluca Gatto and Enzo Martinelli

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The article is an interesting study about the performance of jute fiber nets in terms of strength, strain energy and stiffness, and of composite mortar in terms of thermal conductivity. Both the performance of jute fiber nets and composite mortars were previously studied by the authors. The introduction of this and those papers are quite similar too (one could call it as self plagiarism, so I recommend to change the introduction). So, the main issue to be addressed is to be more specific about the differences between this and the previous studies and to highlight the novelty of the paper. Materials and methods and conclusions are adequate. Furthermore, some minor issues should also be addressed as follows:

Minor issues:

1)      Line 52: consider withdrawing the word “in” after “Notably,”;

2)      Line 86: fix the error of reference “Error! Reference source not found.”;

3)      Lines 95-98: something is missing, please rewrite the paragraph;

4)      Line 105: considering starting a new phrase in “Thermo-structural…”;

5)      Line 132: the correct dimension of density is kg/m³;

6)      Line 176: considering starting a new phrase in “Jute fiber…”;

7)      Line 176: fix the error of reference “Error! Reference source not found.”;

8)      Line 219: replace “m2” by “m²”;

9)      Line 219: replace "tH” by “t_H”;

10)   Line 220: replace "tC” by “t_C”;

11)   Line 221: replace “m2” by “m²”;

12)   Lines 255-279: I suggest replacing most of the text by a Table;

13)   Line 280: replace “rapture” by “rupture”;

14)   Line 323: replace “By” by “by”;

15)   Line 340: consider replacing “said” by “aforementioned”;

16)   Line 341: consider replacing “and it improves” by “consequently improving”;

17)   Line 360: replace “stain” by “strain”.

The quality of english is good. Some typos were identified and presented before.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable time and for his/her important suggestions to improve the manuscript. The authors have enhanced the quality of the manuscript and have addressed almost all suggestions and issues highlighted by the reviewer. Please find the PDF file attached with our replies.

Kind regards,

Arnas Majumder, Flavio Stochino, Andrea Frattolillo, Monica Valdes, Gianluca Gatto and Enzo Martinelli

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors accepted all corrections and suggestions and the paper can now be considered for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has been improved.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors aswered all my queries properly.