Enhancing Compressive Strength of Reticulated Porous Alumina by Optimizing Processing Conditions
, In-Hyuck Song 1 and Se-Hun Kwon 2,*,†Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I think this is a good quality paper. However, in the results section the processing conditions that were fixed in each experimental batch were not described. This will difficult for other researcher the replication of this study. For example, in page 7 it is mentioned that "the alumina slurries prepared with different amounts of PVA binder at a solid loading of 63.5 wt. %. At 15 wt. % of PVA addition". However, the other process parameters are not described.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript ID: applsci-1220217
Title: Enhancing compressive strength of reticulated porous alumina by optimizing processing conditions
Authors: Sujin Lee et al.
Authors don’t write anything about Dolapix CE 64 and DARVAN C-N dispersants. Have these reagents been used before by another researchers? Why were it had chosen? What is its chemical formula? This data must be writing in introduction section.
Materials and methods. What equipment is using for calcination at 400 °C and 1600 °C?
What is the phase of alumina samples? α-Al2O3?
Results.
Figure 3. Why does the surface appear slick when using intermediate particles than other samples? Perhaps figures 3b and 3c are reversed?
Figure 4, 5. Use different colors for columns and curves. Add error bars.
Figure 5. Authors write “prepared from fine, intermediate, and coarse alumina particles”. However, in this figure’s changes Viscosity and other properties. What kind of alumina was used in these figures? Intermediate?
Figure 6. The authors again do not write anything about the alumina type, neither in the text, nor in the figure caption.
Conclusions. The last paragraph needs to be moved into the discussion, Authors can rewrite it in the histogram figure type. This will make it clearer.
Conclusions must be specific and contain final values and numbers. The first two paragraphs contain a lot of words, but there are no research results in them, although the authors have analyzed many physical properties and can show them in the conclusions.
Technical errors:
Introduction. Authors must add full chemical formula of silicon carbide, zirconia, silicon nitride, mullite, aluminum nitride, cordierite, pyrophyllite, diatomite.
Authors write in Introduction section:
Therefore, the compressive strengths of various reticulated porous ceramics are different from those observed when they are prepared as other types of porous ceramics. Typical examples of compressive strengths of reticulated porous ceramics are: 1.60 MPa (prepared from alumina) [4], 1.59 ± 0.13 Mpa [5] and 1.08 ± 0.17 Mpa [6] (silicon carbide), 0.85 ± 0.13 Mpa (zirconia) [7], 0.62 ± 0.03 Mpa [8] and 0.73 Mpa [9] (mullite), 1.4 Mpa (aluminum nitride) [10], and 0.47 ± 0.02 Mpa (cordierite) [11]. On the other hand, the compressive strengths of reticulated porous ceramics are strongly dependent on the pore density (expressed in pores per inch, PPI) and on whether the processing conditions are fully optimized or not.
This text is almost entirely taken from the previous article of the authors (Effect of Processing Conditions on the Properties of Reticulated Porous Diatomite–Kaolin Composites https://doi.org/10.3390/app10207297). It needs to be rewritten. Authors cannot add the same text, even from their previous research. It looks ugly.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors responded in detail to all comments. The article looks much better. This research ("Enhancing compressive strength of reticulated porous alumina by optimizing processing conditions") has been carried out at a good scientific level and can be accepted for publication in Applied Sciences.
Author Response
We gratefully received all comments, which have helped improve our paper, because we respect the reviewer’s distinguished expertise in this area.
Thank you very much for your kind and scientific suggestions.
