Synthesis, Characterization, and Application of Carboxymethyl Cellulose from Asparagus Stalk End

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In paper, synthesis and investigations on carboxymethyl cellulose have been presented. Topic of the research is interesting. The article is well-organized. The methodology of the research and the results of the experiments are well-described. The background of the study has been briefly presented in the Introduction of the article. In general, paper is worth considering for publication but some improvements are suggested. All of them are described more widely below:

• Abstract of the paper should be supplemented with few sentences concerning the significance of the research topic and its novelty.
• Sodium hydroxide is not adequate keyword, such as “carboxymethylation” or “cellulose extraction” is suggested.
• The process of the cellulose extraction from dried asparagus stalk end powder should be briefly described (Section 2.3.).
• Quality of Figure 3. should be significantly improved. Furthermore, it is suggested to present FT-IR spectra in different colors and describe as a, b, c etc. because they are poorly visible now. The same recommendations apply to Figure 6.
• Paper should be significantly re-checked grammatically and linguistically. Additionally, it contains some misspellings (e.g. “conetent” instead of “content” in equation 4.).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments

The paper entitled “Synthesis, Characterization and Application of  Carboxymethyl Cellulose from Asparagus officinalis  Stalk End  ” is an interesting article.

In this research article the authors proposed the extraction and synthesis of cellulose from Asparagus officinalis stalk end to carboxymethyl cellulose  (CMCas)  using  monochloroacetic  acid  (MCA)  via  carboxymethylation  reaction  with  various sodium hydroxide (NaOH)  concentrations starting  from 20%  to  60 %.

The authors proposed several characterizations, the  cellulose  and  CMC as  were characterized by  the  physical, chemical, thermal and morphological properties.  In addition,  mechanical  properties  of  CMC as   films  were  also  investigated.  The authors studied that the  optimum  condition  for  producing CMCas  was found to be used 30% of NaOH concentration for the carboxymethylation reaction,  which provided the highest percent yield of CMC as at 44.04% with the highest degree of substitution (DS)  at 0.98. The thermal analysis highlighted that the melting point of CMCas  decreased with increasing NaOH concentrations. Crystalinity of CMC as  was significantly modified after synthesis at a high concentration. The mechanical investigation permitted to determine that the highest tensile strength  (44.59 MPa) was found in CMC as  film synthesized with 40% of NaOH concentration and the highest percent  elongation at break (24.99%) was obtained in  CMC as  film treated with 30% of NaOH concentration. 

The paper is interesting, a lot of characterizations are presented in this work. I have no hesitation to suggest the publication of this manuscript after some revision. The manuscript will be published in Polymers Journal.

Specific comments

Introduction-paragraph 1: The authors are invite to  stress better the novelty and the final application.

carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) synthesized from asparagus stalk end-paragrapg 2.4: the authors are invited to use the capital letter for carboxymethyl.

Figure 2: The author are invited to eliminate the peak relative to CO₂ present in all the spectra.

Effect of various NaOH concentrations on thermal properties of CMCas-paragraph 3.5: The authors are invited to insert the DSC thermograms.  

Color of cellulose from asparagus stalk end and CMCas- paragraph 3.8: The authors are invited to improve the comment of this paragraph.    

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx