Potential Use of Municipal Waste Incineration Ash as a Hardening Slurry Ingredient
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see the file attached.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Reviewer 1:
1 - A native speaker carried out language proofreading.
2 - The objective of the work was better formulated.
3 - The Type B uncertainty values for this types of measurement was added to methodology section.
4 - The microstructure of ash-based hardening slurries will be the subject of the following article, which is in preparation. Therefore, SEM and XRD analyses were not included here.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is defiantly shown a great effort of experiments, and it is worth to be published. However, I would like to address the following questions or comments to be taken into consideration when revising the manuscript:
1- Authors should improve the quality of all figures. The fonts in the figure should be consistent.
2- Line 43: foreword quotes are unscientific.
3- Materials and methods should be combined with graphics and text to increase the article's readability.
4- Lines 101、152、161: Subtitle serial number classification error.
5- The font of Figure 4 and Figure 5 should be the Times New Roman font.
6- Line 162-208: There are too many experimental descriptions in the text.
7- Figures 6 and 7 are relatively rough in production, and the text in the pictures is very small, and a magnifying glass can be used to see clearly.
8-The table format should use three lines
9-The conclusion must be reinforced.
10- It is better to have this paper extensively edited to improve the language.
11- Authors must be correct references according to the journal guidelines.
12- The introduction part is not fully cited, and a lot of cement research has been carried out, for example (1) Aiai Wang, Shuai Cao, Erol Yilmaz. Effect of height to diameter ratio on dynamic characteristics of cemented tailings backfills with fiber reinforcement through impact loading[J], Construction and Building Materials, 322(2022) 126448.
In summary, the reviewer believes that this manuscript is strongly recommended for publication through the abovementioned revisions.
Author Response
Review 21 - The quality of the figures has been improved.
2 - The authors agree with the reviewer.
3 - The authors feel that the section has been prepared in this way.
4 - It has been corrected.
5 - It has been corrected.
6 - The section describes the research methods, and the authors feel
that this is the way it should be.
7 - It has been corrected.
8 - It has been corrected.
9 - The authors consider the conclusions have been improved.
10 - A native speaker carried out language proofreading.
11 - It has been corrected.
12 - The introduction was enriched by referring to several
literature items on the subject. However, the literature study
did not indicate any studies by other scientists on the use of
the ashes in question in hardening slurries. The article proposed
by the reviewer, although very interesting, does not entirely fit
thematically into the topic discussed in this article; hence has not
been cited.
Reviewer 3 Report
Relevant topic. However, modifications are required before a final decision is made. Some of my comments are as follows:
Title needs improvement “hardened slurry ingredients”…is this the correct term????. Fresh properties were also examined in the paper
Section 2…subsection no. are not correct 3.1, 3.2 etc…Section 3.2 should be before 3.1. Section 3.2..materials needs to be described. This also include MSW Ash.
Title of section 3.1
Page 6..describe the slurry composition and then include the table
What was the basis of slurry composition??
Table 3. better to use litre instead of dm3
Table 4 is about hardened slurry and line 212..first sentence mentions liquid slurry
Correlation between properties could have been conducted to increase the quality of the paper
Conclusions needs improvement
References requires enhancement by including recent references on MSW ash
English requires improvement in many places. Examples are included in square brackets [[ ]].
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the amount of municipal waste generated in Poland. In the context of circular economy assumptions, the key is the availability of tech- 10
nologies that would make it possible to safely process and reuse waste, especially when it is difficult 11
to manage. One of such directions is thermal waste treatment. In 2020, 21.6% of all municipal waste 12
[[ was subjected to this process ]]. Consequently, the amount of ash generated [[ annually??? ]]this way is significant (approximately 2,823,000 tons). One of the areas of use of waste materials is the sealing of earth
hydrotechnical facilities, such as: flood embankments, water dams, embankments of waste landfills.
For this purpose, cut-off screens made of hardening slurries are used. In order to improve the tight- 16
ness and corrosion resistance of hardening suspensions, combustion by-products are added to their
composition. The article presents an assessment of the possibility of using ashes from municipal
waste incineration [[ as an additive to hardening slurries ???]]. It also discusses the technological and operational parameters of the hardening slurries with the addition of the ashes [[ in question ]]. Binding 20
requirements for hardening slurries used for the construction of cut-off walls have been defined. 21
The experiment showed that the tested hardening slurries meet most of the suitability criteria. Further research directions were proposed to
This value is significantly lower than the EU average (489 kg per capita in 2018 [4]). [[ A similar situation ]]] can be observed in other countries of the region: Romania, Latvia, Slovakia, Estonia and the Czech Republic. It seems that this issue is directly associated with two phenomena – 37
formation of illegal landfills and waste burning in household furnaces [5]. Gradual tight- 38
ening of the MW collection system and the growing environmental awareness of the citi- 39
zens suggest that the amount of MW collected in Poland [[ will be growing ]]. 40
The Polish MW management system is governed by, among others, the [[ so-called ]]
Waste Act [3], which implements a number of EU directives in the field of waste manage- 42
ment and environmental protection to Polish legislature [6, 7, 16–21, 8–15].
Thermal treatment of municipal waste (TTMW) aimed at energy recovery is classi- 47
fied in the recovery group [22]. Indeed, 23% of all MW was [[ ??managed?? incinerated ]] in Poland in 2018 this way [2] and a tendency to build new incineration plants has been observed. Cement plants could also play an important role in the incineration of municipal waste, however,
using [[ waster ]] for this purpose is restricted by the limited amount of waste suitable for 51
alternative fuel production and by the poorly developed waste processing industry in Po- 52
land [23]. 53
The TTMW process should supplement the re-use and recycling processes due to 54
economic [[ ??or ]] technical [[ ??and ]] organization reasons [4], which would enable closing the cir- 55
culation at the level of recovery of energy contained in waste. Process by-products include 56
slags, as well as bottom and fly ash, which in accordance with the circular economy (CE) 57
concept and the waste handling hierarchy [22] should be managed in a way that they 58
constitute a valuable product and are no longer treated as waste [[ (currently, such waste is 59
disposed, at a great cost for TT plants) ]]. It is expected that this will contribute to reduced 60
greenhouse gas emissions and natural raw material consumption, as well as strengthen- 61
ing process aspects of CE. For this purpose, it is required to identify the properties of gen- 62
erated waste and its applicability. 63
[[ The paper focuses on an attempt to have hardening slurries utilize two types of
TTMW waste with the codes 19 01 07* and 19 01 13* acc. to [24??]. A hardening slurry is a thixotropic mix (suspension) of water, xxxxxx, [[ as well as, depending on the intended use ]], other ingredients (e.g. blast furnace slag 67
and fly ash) used for the construction of building structures in the ground substrate or 68
when filling gaps and openings in the ground [25–28].
the following materials were used to [[ developed???]] hardening slurry recipes: 153
– tap water, – sodium bentonite, – CEM I 42.5 R cement, – ash from the incineration of municipal waste [[ coded ]]: 19 01 07* – P1,
– ash from the incineration of municipal waste ???coded [conformed to ??] : 19 01 13* – P2.
[[ Process properties ]] of the tested hardening slurries are shown in Table 4.
Author Response
Reviewer 3
1 - In the author's opinion, this item is a minor mistake by the reviewer; in the title, the phrase "hardening slurries" describes a specific type of material.
2 - This has been corrected.
3 - It has been corrected.
4 - It has been corrected.
5 - The recipes for the slurries were based on the authors' experience of working with hardening slurries and coal combustion by-products.
6 - In the authors' opinion, "dm3" is a better unit.
7 - The table refers to the processing properties of liquid hardening suspensions.
8 - The correlation between the properties studied is included in the analysis.
9 - In the authors' opinion, the conclusions have been corrected.
10 - In the authors' opinion, references have been enhanced.
11 - A native speaker carried out language proofreading.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has been improved and I recommend it for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
Now, this revised manuscript can be accepted in its present form.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors seemed to have addressed my comments. However, it would be really helpful if the authors have replied next to each comment so it can be easily followed
