Simulations and Experiments of Soil Temperature Distribution after 2.45 GHz Long-Term Microwave Treatment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Abstract

Line 24, line 29: " soil types", "two kinds of soils" - find better words 

Introduction

Line 40: replace "land quality" with "soil quality"

Line 41-42: remove space after "diseases"; effects on what?

Line 43: "their occurrence" - who are they?

Line 67: "phytium, fusarium" -  first letter capital, italic

Line 70: "subtilis spores" as Bacillus subtilis or?

Line 91-92: "but also lays a scientific foundation for the follow-up study of microwave soil disinfection on microorganisms" - delete this from the Introduction

Material and Methods

Did you performed analyses of physical, chemical and biological properties of the examined soils? Whether there was a need for soil disinfection? This needs to be explained.

Results and Discussion 

Figures 9 and 10/13 and 14 should be separated as well as their respective captions.

Figures 11 and 12 - correct "moistur" for 20% and 23%

Line 428, 706-707 - correct ℃

Table 3 - it is not clear what the +- value is, it is not mentioned anywhere; it might be deleted to make the table clearer.

Conclusions

Conclusions are too long; should be shortened to contain the main findings as well as their possible implications.

Author Response

Article Title: “Simulations and Experiments of Soil Temperature Distribution After 2.45 GHz Long-Term Microwave Treatment”

Dear Reviewers,

On behalf of all the authors, we sincerely appreciate your valuable comments on the manuscript. Your comments not only provided constructive suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript but also led us to consider our approaches and the design of the system in detail. Our future research will benefit from these comments, as well.

Best regards,

Xiaohe Sun, Chunjiang Zhao,Changyuan Zhai ^*

Comment # 1: Line 24, line 29: " soil types", "two kinds of soils" - find better words.

Author response 1: Line 24 has been corrected "the loess and black soil were treated by microwave irradiation for 1~12min respectively (1min/time increment)". "two kinds of soils" has been corrected "loess and black soil" in line 31.

Comment # 2: Introduction, Line 40: replace "land quality" with "soil quality".

Author response 2: Has been corrected in Line 42.

Comment # 3: Introduction,Line 41-42: remove space after "diseases"; effects on what?

Author response 3: Has been removed; lines 43-44 has been corrected to "There are a variety of soil-borne diseases, and they can have concealed, rapid, wide-spread and serious damage to crop quality."

Comment # 4: Introduction, Line 43: "their occurrence" - who are they?

Author response 4: Has been corrected in line 45-47,"To prevent adverse effects of soil-borne diseases and stubborn weeds on crops".

Comment # 5: Introduction, "phytium, fusarium" -  first letter capital, italic.

Author response 5: Has been corrected in line 70-71.

Comment # 6: Introduction,Line 70: "subtilis spores" as Bacillus subtilis or?

Author response 6: Has been corrected to "Bacillus subtilis" in line 73.

Comment # 7: Introduction,Line 91-92: "but also lays a scientific foundation for the follow-up study of microwave soil disinfection on microorganisms" - delete this from the Introduction

Author response 7: Has been deleted.

Comment # 8: Material and Methods,Did you performed analyses of physical, chemical and biological properties of the examined soils? Whether there was a need for soil disinfection? This needs to be explained.

Author response 8: Thank you for the suggestion.I have added instructions on lines 221-224, "Since the main purpose of the experiment in this paper is to explore the heating law of the loess and black soil under long time microwave, the physical and chemical properties of soil samples before and after microwave treatment were not detected and analyzed."

Comment # 9: Results and Discussion,Figures 9 and 10/13 and 14 should be separated as well as their respective captions.

Author response 9: Figures 9 and 10/13 and 14 has been separated as their respective captions.

Comment # 10: Results and Discussion,Figures 11 and 12 - correct "moistur" for 20% and 23%.

Author response 10: The spelling errors in the above comment have been corrected.

Comment # 11: Results and Discussion,Line 428, 706-707 - correct ℃

Author response 11: The wrong format has been corrected.

Comment # 12: Table 3 - it is not clear what the +- value is, it is not mentioned anywhere; it might be deleted to make the table clearer.

Author response 12: A description has been added after Table 3, "the numbers after "±" represent the parameter range."

Comment # 13: Conclusions are too long; should be shortened to contain the main findings as well as their possible implications.

Author response 13: Thank you for the suggestion, the conclusion section has been shortened.

Reviewer 2 Report

Some minor change is required. Comments attached for author for attending.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Article Title: “Simulations and Experiments of Soil Temperature Distribution After 2.45 GHz Long-Term Microwave Treatment”

Dear Reviewers,

On behalf of all the authors, we sincerely appreciate your valuable comments on the manuscript. Your comments not only provided constructive suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript but also led us to consider our approaches and the design of the system in detail. Our future research will benefit from these comments, as well.

Best regards,

Xiaohe Sun, Chunjiang Zhao,Changyuan Zhai ^*

Comment # 1: Line 13-14, page 1: Please emphasize on the interpretation of the results in the concluding lines of the abstract. The motive of this research work is clear, but have the study resulted into expected outcomes or is not clear.

Author response 1: Thank you for the suggestion, Based on your comments, I have emphasized the interpretation of the results in the concluding remarks of the abstract and made clear the expected results in line 35-38, "The results of long time microwave soil heating preliminarly confirmed the feasibility of microwave soil disinfection and the optimal conditions of microwave irradiation in loess of North China loess and Northeast black soil, which provided a certain reference for the study of soil-borne diseases inactivation at high temperature."

Comment # 2: Line 70-73, page 2: Please elaborate and explain how the indigenous microbial community like Arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and non-culturable microbes would be restored after microwave treatment.

Author response 2: Thank you for the suggestion. This passage is a citation from the document "O'Brien, M. Microwave - a fresh look at old technology for weed control. Aust. Cottongrower 2017.", unfortunately, there is no detailed explanation of how "the original dynamic balance of soil biome" changes.But for the question of how arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and non-culturable have changed, I have consulted relevant materials.It is found that the determination of soil arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and non-culturable microbial communities generally requires 16s sequencing before and after microwave treatment, and the results are obtained by comparing the species abundance before and after disinfection.The influence of microwave treatment on soil microorganisms is also part of my follow-up research.

Comment # 3: Line 455-467, page 17: Please establish exact correlation between moisture percentage, soil temperature at different levels and what you found in these two soil samples after treatment. Also establish the correlation between the simulation data for both soil samples with this study.

Author response 3: Analysis between soil moisture content, irradiation time and soil temperature has been added, in line 500-511 in the manuscript. The main purpose of the simulation is to explore the soil surface and soil internal temperature and its variation trend under the action of microwave for a long time. The simulation has certain limitations, and it is difficult to accurately obtain and compare the differences between the two soil samples during the parameter setting process due to its accuracy. Therefore, in order to verify the simulation results and overcome the limitations of the simulation, the accuracy of the microwave soil irradiation laboratory test was strengthened, and the relationship between the soil after microwave irradiation and the irradiation time, soil moisture content and soil type was established according to the test results.

Comment # 4: Line 552-554, page 21: "Large populations of soil pests, phytopathogenic fungi, and bacteria can reach inactivation conditions at 60°C."Please cite appropriate reference for this.

Author response 4: Thank you for the suggestion. The corresponding reference has been added with the serial number [47].

Comment # 5: Line 714-718, page 25: There is no data mentioned in which the sample of soil is collected from irradiated portion of soil which is supposed to be inactivated for pathogenic bacteria, insects and grass seeds is tested for microbiological examination.

There are chances that after the effective irradiation measures also, these pathogens might be grown there until and unless there is a source of nutrition in soil and gaseous exchange is possible.

The insects, nematodes and grass seeds could be prevented for growth, but in case of microbes, they could grow after the soil temperature is reduced.

So, kindly include the results of microbial analysis of these soil samples after exposing them to the microwaves. It might provide the critical data to interpret whether it could restrict the pathogenic bacteria or not.

Author response 5: I am very sorry for the disparity caused by the misrepresentation in the article. In the process of microwave soil disinfection, although soil temperature is the main factor, it is not absolute, so I have revised the relevant expressions in lines 757-762.

This manuscript mainly focuses on loess in North China and black soil in northeast China, the purpose is to explore the soil heating law and temperature changes under the long-term microwave action of different soil moisture content, the feasibility of microwave soil disinfection was explored, which provided a reference for the research on high temperature inactivation of soil-borne diseases.

Next, I will mainly conduct research on soil physical properties, microorganisms and their community functions after microwave treatment under different conditions, which is also an important part of my graduation thesis.

Comment # 6:"Remarks: Kindly include the following portion in bibliography" https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2021.125772

Author response 6: This document gave me a great understanding of the development of green new energy, and it has certain reference value for this paper. I have cited it as a reference in the text, numbered [19], thank you very much for this, for which I am very grateful.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper titled „Simulations and Experiments of Soil Temperature Distribution After 2.45 GHz Long-Term Microwave Treatment” is about a new environmentally friendly and green method how to disinfect soils, which contain soil-borne diseases.

The manuscript contains detailed descriptions about the method, how to fulfil the disinfection, but I cannot see any detailed information about the soil (about its physical and chemical characteristics), except the moisture content of the samples. I think, especially physical characters of the soils have important effects on the efficiency on the method mentioned in this paper. What are the exact meaning of black soil and loess? What are the characters of those samples?

I think the results are suitable and acceptable for the practice. How can this method fulfil in an open air field? Can it be used just in the isolated systems e.g in green houses and under tunnels?

Author Response

Article Title: “Simulations and Experiments of Soil Temperature Distribution After 2.45 GHz Long-Term Microwave Treatment”

Comment:The paper titled „Simulations and Experiments of Soil Temperature Distribution After 2.45 GHz Long-Term Microwave Treatment” is about a new environmentally friendly and green method how to disinfect soils, which contain soil-borne diseases.

The manuscript contains detailed descriptions about the method, how to fulfil the disinfection, but I cannot see any detailed information about the soil (about its physical and chemical characteristics), except the moisture content of the samples. I think, especially physical characters of the soils have important effects on the efficiency on the method mentioned in this paper. What are the exact meaning of black soil and loess? What are the characters of those samples?

I think the results are suitable and acceptable for the practice. How can this method fulfil in an open air field? Can it be used just in the isolated systems e.g in green houses and under tunnels?

Dear Reviewers,

On behalf of all the authors, we sincerely appreciate your valuable comments on the manuscript. Your comments not only provided constructive suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript but also led us to consider our approaches and the design of the system in detail. Our future research will benefit from these comments, as well.

In the process of microwave acting on soil, microwave energy is converted into heat energy, and soil disinfection is carried out by using the characteristics of microwave and its heating law in soil.This manuscript is mainly tested on loess in North China and black soil in Northeast China. The purpose is to obtain the soil heating laws and temperature changes under different soil moisture contents under the action of microwave for a long time, explore the feasibility of microwave soil disinfection, and provide a reference for the research on high temperature inactivation of soil-borne diseases.The physical properties of soil mentioned in "Comment", such as soil aggregates, mechanical composition, PH and other indicators, do have a certain influence on the heating law of microwave soil. Thank you very for your comments, and I will continue to do more in-depth research on this work. Following the comments made, more descriptions of the physical and chemical characteristics of the loess and black soils in the experiments have been added in the manuscript under "Materials and methods".

In addition, the research on the physical properties of soil, microorganisms and their community functions after microwave treatment under different conditions is also the work that must be completed later, which is also an important part of my graduation thesis.

For the application of microwave soil disinfection, it is generally applicable to small plots such as greenhouses. For this, I participated in the development of an intelligent microwave soil disinfection equipment equipped with 8 microwave units, which is currently in the experimental stage.

Best regards,

Xiaohe Sun, Chunjiang Zhao,Changyuan Zhai ^*