Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find attached the Review report.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for offering detailed comments on the manuscript. We have considered all the suggestions made by the reviewer and suitably revised the manuscript.

Please see the attachment for detailed responses. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors I would like  to repeat once again that I am impressed with the amount of work done and the work certainly deserves publication, in my opinion. Questions and comments on the text: Figure 1 - Is this borrowing from the authors from the literature or is it their development? Figure 2 is of very poor quality and needs to be expanded if possible. Was the equipment used for batch processing or was this equipment specially designed somewhere? Who is its manufacturer? for example, equipment that is mentioned on line 93, line 100, line 101, line 261 and line 262. Why was the process temperature (line 101) 100 degrees Celsius, how was this temperature maintained? I would add that the article requires more careful formatting, for example, the font in lines 407-409 is different from the rest of the text.

 

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for offering detailed comments on the manuscript. We have considered all the suggestions made by the reviewer and suitably revised the manuscript.

Please see the attachment for detailed response.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Congratulations to your work! It is very interesting, since there is a high expectation from the society towards REE, the raw materials  for HighTech industry. Your work is rather industrial as the scientific, but there is a need in such research as well.

What I miss in your paper:

- description of reagents and parameters you used in your flotation tests;

- mentioning chemical analytical techniques you used for monazite determination in products of very low monazite content (you gave ICP as used for determination of composition of the enriched monazite). 

Good luck for your future research!

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for offering detailed comments on the manuscript. We have considered all the suggestions made by the reviewer and suitably revised the manuscript.

Please see the attachment for the detailed response.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article deals with the development of a process flow sheet to recover. The article is poorly organized and disordered. Both the methods and results are insufficiently and disorderly presented.

The whole article is confused.

Author Response

As per the suggestions of the honorable reviewers, the whole text has been suitably revised, reorganized, and Grammarly checked. The quality of the manuscript has greatly improved due to the offered suggestions.

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The content of the manuscript is of great interest to the readers of this journal, and it is significant that a process has been developed to produce a high-purity monazite concentrate from a very low-grade monazite deposit using various mineral processing methods. Unfortunately, however, the content of this paper is limited to a description of the experimental results, just like a work report, making it difficult to accept it as an original paper.

The following three items are necessary to be considered for publication as an original paper, and at least two of them should be included in the revised manuscript.

 

1.        Clarify the relationship between mineral processing results and fundamental mineralogical property (particle size, shape, density, magnetization properties, electrical conductivity, wettability such as contact angle, etc.) of each mineral in the ore.

2.        Indicate the grades of existent minerals in each particle size fraction and state how you selected mineral processing method in each stage by considering these properties.

3.        Provide a quantitative evaluation describing the sharpness of mutual separation among various minerals at each unit operation and make clear why the minerals are separated from each other at each unit operation.

Author Response

The author's reply is submitted in the enclosed word document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, 

Congratulations on the significant improvement of your manuscript. By my opinion, it is now suitable to be published in Minerals.

To avoid confusion, please keep in mind that comment 22 refers exclusively to the ordinate scale which should not go to 120% but to 100%. Also, comment 14 refers to the grade value of 68% that was given in Figure 10 before your final correction. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English language is ok by my opinion.

Author Response

The author's reply is submitted in the enclosed word document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Even though the Authors have made some editing, the main issues is still the  disordered presentation. Authors should aim to more clear and concise presentation. The whole paper should be rewritten.

Author Response

The author's reply is submitted in the enclosed Word document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In the three issues I previously pointed out, a general explanation has been added for the issue 1, but unfortunately, no improvement has been made for the other two. Once again, the specific points of the remaining two issues are written in the following. These considerations, or other scientific considerations you noticed, are necessary for the manuscript to be published as an original paper.

 

2.  It is important to discuss whether or not the grain size of various minerals was appropriate for each unit operation adopted, since the applicable size range of each unit operation has been predetermined. In detail, it is important to (1) show the grain size distribution of the various mineral grains and specify whether the size range of each processing method was appropriate for it or whether it was ensured by sieving as a preteatment, etc., and (2) if the above (1) is not optimal, consider the accuracy of each beneficiation and the degree of deviation from the applied grain size.

 

3.  Not only the final beneficiation results, but also the result of each unit operation should be provided by showing some quantitative indicators (e.g., separation efficiency) to describe how the various minerals were separated at each unit operation.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English writing is almost appropriate.

Author Response

Thank you for the excellent suggestions.

Please see the enclosed attachment for a detailed reply. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The Authors have improved the manuscript, and I would consider accepting this article for publication. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for the positive suggestion.