Biomass-Derived Carbon Materials in Heterogeneous Catalysis: A Step towards Sustainable Future
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This review reports the uses of materials produced from biomass in the realm of heterogeneous catalysis highlighting the different types of carbon materials derived from biomass that are potential catalysts, importance and unique properties of heterogeneous catalysts with different preparation methods are summarized. The challenges and potential prospects of heterogeneous catalysis are also discussed. Overall, this manuscript is well-written and can be considered for publication after a revision with additional discussions. Details comments are following.
1. Bio-oil, as the bulk product of biomass pyrolysis technology, has aroused widespread concern as a novel carbon source recently. It was suggested to add it to the manuscript.
2. Nitrogen-doped is also expected to enhance the conductivity of the carbon (graphitic nitrogen). more discussions are required. See relevant references can be referred, Advanced Materials 33.47 (2021): 2004689.
3. For HER electrocatalysis, the coupling effects of defects and other modifications such as heteroatoms or interfaces should be mentioned. Related reports such as Adv. Energy Mater., 2022, 12, 2200434, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 24486-24492 and doi.org/10.1002/cey2.213 could be helpful.
4. Large specific surface areas provided by porous nanoarrays are considered to play a significant role in loading plenty of defect sites on electrodes. Further detailed discussions on the porosity structure and performance of electrodes should be given.
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
In this manuscript the authors attempted to summarize the recent works related to the biomass-derived carbon material and to highlight their application in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. The information collected and discussed by authors seems to be interesting for readers of Catalysts journal. Meanwhile, some issues should be addressed before publication.
Below are the comments and questions:
1) Introduction, Lines 30-55: The presented historical report about the development of heterogeneous catalysis as a science (which occupies about 1/3 of the Introduction section) is not directly related to the topic of the review paper. The more relevant information should be discussed here.
2) Introduction, Line 72: “… research in this area is still latent” - it is difficult to agree with the wording proposed by the authors. Please rephrase.
3) Figure 2: Authors did not mention about the synthesis of carbon materials from such an abundant biomass wastes as a nutshell and rice husk. Why?
4) Figure 2: Among the variety of filamentous carbon materials presented (CNTs, SWCNTs, MWCNTs) there was no place for carbon nanofibers (CNFs). Is there any information about the synthesis of CNFs from biomass?
5) Lines 151-152: “High porosity biochar and structurally bonded nitrogen groups are excellent supercapacitor electrode materials” – please rephrase.
6) Figure 6: The structure of this figure should be redrawn to become more appropriate.
7) Lines 193-195: A nitrogen content in the synthesized N-doped CNTs should be reported.
8) Figure 9, x-axis title: What does it mean “Catalytic loading (mol%)”? Catalyst loading?
9) Line 243: “The most crucial stage in the production of catalysts is catalyst preparation” – please, correct.
10) Subsection 3 “Methods of preparation…”: The general scheme representing the principle methods to prepare catalysts supported on carbon materials should be created.
11) Subsection 4: Other heteroatoms used to functionalize carbon materials (such as B, P, halogens) should be also mentioned here, since there is some discussion on their application further, in Subsection 5.
12) Figure 15: What does the inscription “M+S+C900-900” mean? “DI” abbreviation should be defined.
13) Figure 16: The scale bar numbers (50 nm, 10 nm,..) should be put over micrographs. The figure 16D,E,F,G must be reformatted.
14) Lines 555, 576, 612, 866-867, 897: The superscript and subscript indexes must be corrected.
15) There are few typos and errors in the text to be corrected, for example:
- Abstract, Line 13: “… have a edge…” should be replace by “… have an edge…”, etc.
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript explores the application of biomass-derived carbon materials in heterogeneous catalysis. This topic is interesting and the authors bring a lot of valuable information about its development/building and application on different processes. In this sense I recommend its publication after the following points being considered:
· A strong English revision is necessary
· Some figures are not called in the text, please check the entire manuscript.
· Please perform a careful revision on manuscript format, to make sure it is according to the author's guidelines. For example, there are topics where font size is smaller than the journal's template.
· Some information is constantly being repeated in the manuscript, such as “A heterogeneous catalytic system is formed when carbon-based materials are used as catalysts and catalytic supports. They offer rapid recovery from the reaction system, good chemical and thermal stability, low susceptibility toward corrosion, and low cost”. This often happens when a review is written by a large group of authors and a final check is necessary to avoid undesirable repetition. Please check the entire manuscript to remove such things.
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The current response is not satisfactory.
There are many mistakes in the literature labeling, and each reference should be clearly marked to avoid repetition, such as literature 93. Including journal abbreviations should be consistent.
And the revised version of the article has a lot of modified records instead of a direct highlight with some specific color.
The author's response is not clear enough, please respond to the last comment one by one
I hope the authors can take it seriously.After this, then it can be considered for publication
Author Response
Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
