Mitigation of Odor and Gaseous Emissions from Swine Barn with UV-A and UV-C Photocatalysis
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper titled ‘Mitigation of odor and gaseous emissions from swine barn 2 with UV-A and UV-C photocatalysis’ is interesting and should be useful for readers engaged in odour and gaseous emissions treatment. However, for this reviewer some corrections are needed to improve this manuscript.
L 125 Is the word ‘arrow’ correctly used with relation to the Figure 1?
The methodology section could be extended for an information about time intervals of the experiment. This information might be critical with the changing? conditions inside the barn over time. This reviewer is not convinced about stability of manure headspaces over time. If the authors are sure about relatively constant conditions of the manure headspaces or the experiment time was short enough to make those changes negligible, they should state it into the text to make the interpretation of the results clearer.
Most of the comments related to section 3.1 are valid in the 3.2 section as well.
L149-156 Are odour measurements were conducted according to the standard? EN13725 or equivalent national ones? This reviewer is not sure about the olfactory sensitivity of trained panelists.
L177 the subtitle might be rephrased. This reviewer is confused. Is this subtitle related to overall odour or the results of GC analysis alone.
L186 mdCG or mdGC?
L225 targeted gas and odor?
L278-281 This sentence is not clear for this reviewer. Please rephrase. Did authors measure odour intensity in this study? Why the lack of apparent improvement is related to the odour measurement method. Can authors explain it more detailed?
L281-282 This sentence is not clear for this reviewer. Please rephrase.
L 284-287 Table 1, columns 4th and 5th, what mean the values following ‘±’ symbol. (This comment is related to other tables as well). Moreover, the symbol OUE/m3 suggests the measurements were conducted according to the EN13725 standard or equivalent national one whilst it is not clear stated in the methodology section. See comment L149-156.
L 282-283 There is no need to keep this sentence in the 3.1.1. section.
L288 Based on which values of PAC (with the assumption of 3 replicates) the percentage reduction was done? The average? The minimum? The maximum?
L538-539 It might be valuable to add the way of the overall odour character description in the methodology section.
L542 The assumption that any of the chemicals generated during UV-A treatment made the overall odour less offensive is speculative. The change in odour character might be caused by changing proportion of the chemicals or masking effects. The reduction of one (or more) particular odorant(-s) (even not measured in this study) might give the way to other odorants previously masked. The authors correctly spotted that the presence of other than analytically measured odorant might have influence on an overall odour. Especially, if they are present in the concentrations below method detection limit (MDL) and poses challenge in analytical methodologies. The similar issue was observed in (Barczak, R.J., Fisher, R.M., Le-Minh, N., Stuetz, R.M., 2019. Importance of 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA) as an odorant in the emissions from anaerobically stabilized dewatered biosolids. Chemosphere 236, 124340). Moreover, at the Fig 4 is not clear if the toothpaste, mouthwash, mint odour signal was registered in the control.
L547 odor intensity or odor concentration?
L552 In the Figure S1 are presented results for panelist 1. Please correct here or in the supplementary materials.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf