Characterization of Natural Rubber, Styrene Butadiene Rubber, and Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Monomer Blend Composites Loaded with Zinc Stearate to Be Used in the Solid Tire Industry
, Wahyu Bahari Setianto 1, Heryoki Yohanes 1, Gigih Atmaji 1, Lanjar 1, Dede Heri Yuli Yanto 2, Enasty Pratiwi Wulandari 3, Arya Wiranata 4 and Bahruddin Ibrahim 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript needs to be enhanced for reconsideration for publication by Applied Sciences. The following issues need to be resolved by the authors:
1. The use of English must be corrected throughout the manuscript.
2. Authors should avoid repeating part of the words in the title as Keywords as much as possible
3. The last sentence under Introduction should be placed among the advantages of Zn compound in the rubber compounding.
4. I doubt if the basis for comparison of vulcanized rubbed is valid, since the percentage composition of the vulcanized rubber 1 to 5 varied.
5. Let the captioning of the Table runs numerically from 1 to x. Avoid using Table 1a, b, c etc
6. Figure 1a to g should be placed side by side just like in Figures 3a to e. The same is applicable to Figures 2a to e.
7. Definition of tensile strength in the manuscript is wrong.
8. The claim made between lines 266 and 268 was too general as only VBP-05 showed increase in tensile strength after aging.
9. NR should be defined at first mention.
The effects if ZnO/stearic acid and ZS on properties of vulcanized rubbers must be specifically explained in the manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you to the reviewers who have reviewed the draft journal manuscript we sent you. Your suggestions are very helpful for us in improving the quality of our journal manuscript drafts. On your suggestions, we have made some improvements to the manuscripts we send. Here we attach the responses and improvements to the manuscript that we have done.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting manuscript. An application of Zinc Stearate (ZS) to rubber mixes (NR, SBR, and NBR) resulted in improvement of the additives' distribution into the rubber vulcanization matrix and mechanical properties of vulcanized rubbers.
1. Rubber compound formulations were composed of many ingredients and were the same for all studied samples, except of changing loading of ZS.
2. In ref. [24], cited in line 174, ZnS was used, but not ZS.
3. A statement: "The presence of silica as a reinforcing filler reacts with the polymer to form C-SiO bonds and increase cross-linking" (see lines 326-327) seems to be false. The linkage C-Si-O is present in silane coupling agent (SCA), which was used for surface modification of nano ZnO (see ref. [47]).
4. What does it mean: "intermolecular density" (see lines 395-396), "50.95 Wt group C elements, 28.7% Wt Zn, 15.9% Wt O, 1.5% Wt Si, 1.45% Ca Wt, Al, and S 0.8% wt." (in lines 412-413) ?
5. Have terms: "score time (ts2)" in line 62, "scorch time (ts2)" in lines 127 and 172, and "time score (ts2") in line 450 the same meaning ?,
6. Some language errors should be corrected, e.g. a word "bifore" (in Fig. 1a-1f), Cross-linkk" (in lines 161-162), "thes" (in line 340).
Author Response
Thank you to the reviewers who have reviewed the draft journal manuscript we sent you. Your suggestions are very helpful for us in improving the quality of our journal manuscript drafts. On your suggestions, we have made some improvements to the manuscripts we send. Here we attach the responses and improvements to the manuscript that we have done.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Accept
