Valorization of Rice Straw into Cellulose Microfibers for the Reinforcement of Thermoplastic Corn Starch Films

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study explored the composites formed by cellulose microfiber and thermoplastic starch. The comments of the reviewer are showed below,

1. The application of the composites should be described in more detail in the introduction.
2. For composites investigated in this work, the study of hydrolysis is also very important. The authors should also conduct related research on the hydrolysis properties.
3. The authors should add the experimental results when the CF content is greater than 5%, and also conduct a comparative discussion with other results.
4. The DSC curves in Fig. 7 seems to have insufficient intensity. The authors have to confirm the DSC results in Fig. 7.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you very much for reviewing the manuscript. Please find below the answers to your comments. 

1. The application of the composites should be described in more detail in the introduction.

The requested information was added in the Introduction part, please see page 2, lines 79-85.

2. For composites investigated in this work, the study of hydrolysis is also very important. The authors should also conduct related research on the hydrolysis properties.

Although this comment is very useful since the hydrolysis study is important to characterize this type of material, this property is mainly dependent on the structural characteristics and properties of starches. Based on the fact that the aim of this work is to study the effect of incorporating cellulose microfibers on thermoplastic starch and comparing it with a modified starch matrix by applying the dry heating modification, we believe that the number of analyses performed in this work are already adequate. Moreover, it can be influenced by water solubility, as it was included in lines 450-453. In any case, it was indicate in the conclusions that future studies will deal with this characterization.

3. The authors should add the experimental results when the CF content is greater than 5%, and also conduct a comparative discussion with other results.

The microfiber contents were selected according to the optimization performed in a previous study (please see, doi:10.32604/JRM.2018.00127). This information was added in the Experimental part, section 2.4. Furthermore, this selection seems to be correct due to the fact that the intermediate content yielded the best results.

4. The DSC curves in Fig. 7 seems to have insufficient intensity. The authors have to confirm the DSC results in Fig. 7.

The results from the DSC analysis have been verified. The DSC curves showed insufficient intensity due to the low concentration of intact starch granules in the TPS and TPSDH films, which gelatinized during the first thermal scan.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Your manuscript is well written with great scientific importance. However, I have some suggestions to make.

Please do not leave space between numbers and °C. Correct it throughout the text.

Line 90: Instead of “MCF” please write “CMF”.

Line 169 and 173: Please write “Zeiss” instead of “Zeiis”.

Line 306: Do you mean Figure 2d? There is no Figure 3d in the manuscript.

It would be helpful if you could provide a graph with the second heating scan (DSC measurements) that you determined the glass transition temperature of the samples.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you very much for reviewing the manuscript. Please find below the answers to your comments. 

1. Please do not leave space between numbers and °C. Correct it throughout the text.

This has been corrected along the manuscript.

2. Line 90: Instead of “MCF” please write “CMF”.

This typo was amended.

3. Line 169 and 173: Please write “Zeiss” instead of “Zeiis”.

This typi was also amended.

4. Line 306: Do you mean Figure 2d? There is no Figure 3d in the manuscript.

Figure numbers were corrected in the manuscript.

4. It would be helpful if you could provide a graph with the second heating scan (DSC measurements) that you determined the glass transition temperature of the samples.

Since the aim of DSC was to evaluate the effect of the CFM addition and DH treatment on the thermal properties of TPS, the first heating scans were more adequate and these were the ones provided. In addition, due to the considerable number of figures (7), we prefer to provide only these curves.