Prediction of Key Crop Growth Parameters in a Commercial Greenhouse Using CFD Simulation and Experimental Verification in a Pilot Study
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Line 158- It’s not clear the unit of measure “tons” of what? Maybe it woul be better to use SI (Joule)
Line 171- 25,000
Line 178- It’s not clear measurements seem to be conducted for a day while temperature, humidity and temperature are constant.
Line 189- please use the same decimals: 34.0, 8.0,
Line 201- Absorbance and not abrobtance
Line 203- Maybe is more correct “passing”
Line 205- some typing mistakes : Absorbtance, absorbing, mataerial
Line 207- In Table 1 is not very clear the “-“ at denominator
Line 207- In table 1: same decimals: 63.00%, 41.00%
Line 212- conducted and not “comducted”
Line 249- maybe “Kit 3” and not “Kits 3”
Line 258- the prediction is over a 24-hoour period. This sentence seems to be not in accordance with line 293 where it seems that only one value of temperature, air velocity and humidity is taken into account.
Line 318- k-e and, please, it would be better to add a reference
Line 321-322 – Please specify what equation number the description refers to (maybe continuity equation (1), Navier-Stokes (2), energy equation (3))
Line 330- [put. reference no.] ?
Line 335- Table 3, it’s not very clear the description of “lighting + small power …” maybe it’s “Area of…”
Line 335- Table 3, how is calculated (or measured) the value of “direct solar heat from roof”
Line 336- Table 4 – what RH refers to?
Line 337- “per” not very clear
Line 438- it seems that the temperature of the floor in Fig 7 is highest then 18°C (the colour seems to be green)
Line 543- Table 6 for
Line 551- It’s not very clear what the authors mean with “standard deviation” of simulated values. They are calculated and not measured.
Line 557- 1.0m, 1.7m
Line 608- 19.23 °C
Author Response
Der Sir,
Please find attached response to reviewer 01 along with the corrections high lighted in yellow.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper carried out a full-scale, steady state CFD simulation of a commercial greenhouse which was equipped with the boxtype evaporative cooler. Besides, the CFD simulation were verified by measuring the environmental parameters in an experimental greenhouse in the Emirate of Dubai. A lot of work were done in this study, but the significance and innovation was not clear. It is suggested to reorganize the article structure and research idea from a new perspective. Below are the detailed comments:
- The purposes and objective of this paper is not clear. The CFD technology has been widely used in the agricultural field for many years. If only some CFD simulation of a greenhouse were analyzed, it is difficult to discover the innovation points. As mentioned in this study, a new evaporative cooling system (different with the conventional cooling pads), i.e., boxtype evaporative cooler, was firstly adopted in the commercial greenhouse. Therefore, it is suggested to focus on the boxtype evaporative cooler in this study, rather than the predictive capabilities of CFD tools.
- There are so many paragraphs in Section “Introduction”, buy many of them have nothing to do with the topic of this article. Please simplify it and focus on the topic.
- Please introduce more details about the box type evaporative coolers, and explain why it has much higher cooling efficiency than the traditional evaporative cooling pads.
- In Table 3, what does the “Heat load from human” mean?
- It is suggested to simplify the information in Tables 2~4. Please show the most important parameters.
- In the CFD simulation, the angle of the lower drum diffuser was set to 15°. However, it was changed to 12° in the Pilot run. Please explain the reason for this adjustment.
- The simulation results in Table 6 are not consistent with the text in Section 3.1~3.3.
- The “Abstract” and “Conclusion” should be improved.
- The English writing should be improved.
- There are many mistakes in the manuscript, please check it carefully, such as:
- In line 344, “Figure 4” should be changed to “Figure 5”.
- In line 556, it should be “1.7 m” instead of “1,7 m”.
- In line 607, there is a redundant letter “a” after the “19.23 ℃”.
Author Response
Dear Sir,
Please find attached reviewer02 response along with the corrections marked in the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Most of the comments were responded and the revised manuscript was improved. However, there are still some mistakes, such as:
(1) "The HVAC system is run by a fully-automated real time feedback-based climate management system (CMS)" in Section "Abstract" were appeared twice in Line 16 and Line 20.
(2) "Cubic Meter per Hour (CMH)" is not suitable as a keyword. What is more, it is suggested to add a keyword "Box type evaporative coolers".
(3) In Line 54 "......evaporative cooling technology A schematic of such a greenhouse is shown in Figure 1 (a)......", please add a punctuation mark between "technology" and "A".
Please check the manuscript carefully.
Author Response
Dear Sir,
Please find attached response to reviewer 02(round 02) along with the marked manuscript. changes marked in gray colour.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The content of the paper is very unclear. The title of the paper is already unclear, What is the meaning of Numerical verification? What is optimal? What is a commercial sustainable greenhouse? Sustainable in terms of profitability? Energy? Water? What is a box type evaporative cooling system?
The abstract should provide inside into the goal of the research and the research done. This is not the case. the last sentence for example from the abstract is fully unclear since it will depend largely on the climate conditions design of the greenhouse and many other parameters.
The introduction section is also very unclear in combination with poor English. The information provided in the tables needs a lot of clarification.
In summary, the paper should focus on the comparison between the experimental results and the CFD results and clearly describe both the experimental setup and the CFD assumptions. For this more information should be added and all irrelevant information should be removed.
Reviewer 2 Report
Please, find attache the file with my comments to the manuscript.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
