Utilization of Industrial Waste in Cement in a Marine Environment with a Tropical Climate

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

thank you for your interesting contribution. Few suggestions are available in the attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

First of all, I would like to thank you and the reviewers for providing us with constructive suggestions to improve our manuscript. And I want to inform you that the errors of the grammatical mistakes, sentence structure, and consistency have been checked thoroughly. Moreover, the manuscript has been checked according to the suggestions provided by you and the reviewers. Kindly find below the responses to the specific comments.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind regards,

Chu Thi Xuan Hoa

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript  entitled “Utilization of Some Industrial Wastes for Cement in  Marine Environment with Tropical Climate” focuses on the study of cement mortars that use industrial waste in partial replacement of cement. In particular, fly ash, silica fume and also plasticizer were used. A series of characterizations were carried out and subsequently the best identified systems were used to produce components for sea dykes. The latter were directly placed in the field and subsequently characterized at time intervals for a total time interval of 48 months. The work is not particularly original, in fact many studies present in the literature are similar. More interesting can be considered the application of the results obtained in the laboratory directly on the components of the sea dykes. The work does not bring particular novelties in this field of research although it could be more interesting if considered as a case study. I therefore believe that it could be considered for publication but after a substantial revision.

 

Here are some suggestions for authors:

 

-) It is necessary to underline the aspects of originality of the research or the new contribution it determines to current knowledge.

 

-) How were the data reported in Table 1 and 2 obtained?

 

-) The decimal approximations in Tables 1 and 2 should all be the same.

 

-) To avoid confusion in Table 3 a column with the percentage of plasticizer used should also be reported. Different codes seem to have the same composition !!

 

-) In table 4 it is necessary to insert a legend and indicate the meaning of the symbols, w, B, P, etc.

 

-) Figure 2a is not complete. What are the dimensions?

 

-) 3.1Water demand. What are the actual quantities of water used? Table 3 should contain a complete proportions mix and possibly be reported in this paragraph.

 

-) The legend of figure 3 b must be revised

 

-) Does table 5 show the DTA or DTG data? In the text at line 244 they are DTA while in the caption of table 5 they are TGA

 

-) With what certainty do we recognize that the crystals are Ca(OH)₂ or Silica? It may be important to add EDSX elemental analysis.

 

-) Paragraph 3.4. No information is provided in section "2. Experimental details ”on the mechanical strength tests that are instead reported in paragraph 3.4. How were these tests carried out? How many times have they been repeated?

 

 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

First of all, I would like to thank you and the reviewers for providing us with constructive suggestions to improve our manuscript. And I want to inform you that the errors of the grammatical mistakes, sentence structure, and consistency have been checked thoroughly. Moreover, the manuscript has been checked according to the suggestions provided by you and the reviewers. Kindly find below the responses to the specific comments.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind regards,

Chu Thi Xuan Hoa

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a good paper but it needs some improvements before it is finally published. The article would be suitable for publication in the Special issue on Sustainable Concrete for the Marine environment and also can draw the attention of the target audience. The review of some key research papers in this area is missing (e.g. Energy and Buildings 158: 1694-1702, 2018). The goal and objectives are spelled out clearly. Please not that the physio-chemical properties of fly ash vary with thermal plants as coal quality varies. This aspect needs to be clarified in the methodology. A brief discussions on the determination of chemical compositions required. Please note that the paper will be read by international audience and so it needs to be clearly explained whether Vietnamese standard follows US or British or other established standard. Please mention the 'codes' of the standards used. The methodology should discuss how durability and compressive strength were measured. I don't see at what age of the concrete, these compressive strength were measured. The results and discussion section, the results of the compressive strength must be compared with the similar study to enhance the reproducibility of this paper. The text/legend in the graph is extremely small, cant read them. Please enlarge the font.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

First of all, I would like to thank you and the reviewers for providing us with constructive suggestions to improve our manuscript. And I want to inform you that the errors of the grammatical mistakes, sentence structure, and consistency have been checked thoroughly. Moreover, the manuscript has been checked according to the suggestions provided by you and the reviewers. 

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind regards,

Chu Thi Xuan Hoa

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All suggestions have been made.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

First of all, I would like to thank you and the reviewers for providing us with constructive suggestions to improve our manuscript. And I want to inform you that the errors of the grammatical mistakes, sentence structure, and consistency have been checked thoroughly. Moreover, the manuscript has been checked according to the suggestions provided by you and the reviewers. 

Thank you so much!

Best regards, 

Author

Chu Thi Xuan Hoa

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have tried to incorporate most of my comments The some comments have been addressed hastily. For example, Tang et al. 2018 [29] revealed that porous concrete block has reduced 1.9-4.9%. I understand it is the reduction in the compressive strength but it has not clearly mentioned in the sentence In addition, the method for determining physio-chemical characteristics has not been written. The method of compressive strength should mentioned clear the intervals in terms of days. I strongly suggest the authors to go through whole article for a number of times to ensure that it is logically flowing well and still there is a number of basic grammatical errors that needs to be fixed. I will read the next revised version to make a decision for publishing this good paper.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

First of all, I would like to thank you and the reviewers for providing us with constructive suggestions to improve our manuscript. And I want to inform you that the errors of the grammatical mistakes, sentence structure, and consistency have been checked thoroughly. Moreover, the manuscript has been checked according to the suggestions provided by you and the reviewers. Kindly find below the responses to the specific comments.

 

Kind regards,

Chu Thi Xuan Hoa

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf