Organic Waste Gasification: A Selective Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting study. I enjoyed reading the manuscript. Nevertheless, it needs some further improvements. In general, there are still some occasional grammar errors throughout the manuscript, especially the article "the," "a," and "an" is missing in many places; please make a spellchecking in addition to these minor issues. The reviewer has listed some specific comments that might help the authors further enhance the manuscript's quality.

1. Specific Comments

A list of acronyms is needed.

• Introduction
• The objectives should be more explicitly stated.
• What is the novelty of this work?

• Methods
• Please explain the literature search approach.
• The methodology limitation should be mentioned.
• All variables should be explained.

• Results
• This section is well written.

• Discussion

• The discussion should summarize the manuscript's main finding(s) in the context of the broader scientific literature and address any limitations of the study or results that conflict with other published work.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments. I have made my best to follow all of them and marked all changes in the text in yellow.

This is an interesting study. I enjoyed reading the manuscript. Nevertheless, it needs some further improvements. In general, there are still some occasional grammar errors throughout the manuscript, especially the article "the," "a," and "an" is missing in many places; please make a spellchecking in addition to these minor issues. The reviewer has listed some specific comments that might help the authors further enhance the manuscript's quality.

I have checked the text and made its spellchecking.

1. Specific Comments

A list of acronyms is needed.

A list of acronyms (abbreviations) was provided at the end of the original manuscript. For the sake of convenience, I moved it ahead of the manuscript.

• Introduction
• The objectives should be more explicitly stated.

I have stated the objectives more explicitly (see the end of section “Introduction”):

Thus, the objective of this review is to consider the selective studies on environmentally friendly, combustion-free, allothermal, atmospheric-pressure, noncatalytic, direct H2O/CO2 gasification of organic feedstocks like biomass, SSW, and MSW, and demonstrate pros and cons of the approaches and provide future perspectives. The main issue addressed is the effect of gasification temperature and H2O/CO2-to-feedstock ratio on the gasification efficiency, syngas quality and yield, as well as the feasibility of in-situ control of syngas composition. A new and promising technology of organic feedstock gasification by detonation USS is proposed to stimulate worldwide research. These objectives and issues are the novel and distinctive features of the present review.

• What is the novelty of this work?

I tried to formulate the novelty of this work in the last three sentences of the text highlighted above.

 Methods

• Please explain the literature search approach.

To follow this comment, I have reformulated the first sentence in Definition section and highlighted the sentences showing the approach.

• The methodology limitation should be mentioned.

To follow this comment, I have reformulated the first sentence in Definition section and highlighted the sentences showing the limitations.

• All variables should be explained.

All variables used in the review are explained in section “Definitions.”

• Results
• This section is well written.

• Discussion

• The discussion should summarize the manuscript's main finding(s) in the context of the broader scientific literature and address any limitations of the study or results that conflict with other published work.

To follow this comment, I have highlighted the sentences summarizing pros and cons of low-temperature, high-temperature, and detonation USS gasification technologies both in two Discussion sections and in Conclusions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article contains a review of the literature, also taking into account the author's own works. The advantages and disadvantages of individual gasification methods are shown. The results of experimental and technological works as well as the theory and computer modeling of processes occurring in the combustion-free, allothermal, noncatalytic direct H2O/CO2 gasification of BIOMASS and other organic feedstocks are reviewed. The paper indicates energetic and environmental advantages of ultra-superheated steam detonation gun technology.

The review is an important contribution to our knowledge concerning gasification processes, and without doubts is worth of publication.

Minor English corrections would be advisable.

Just at the beginning. In my feeling, in the text below the use of the word Thus suggests that the second sentence should be a consequence of the first, but it is not so.

Row 36 – 42   Combustion of wastes results in the formation of airborne gaseous pollutants, like polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), NOx, SOx, HCl, furans, dioxins, as well as organic and inorganic aerosol particulate, fly ash, ashes, etc. Thus, biomass consists of lignin, carbohydrates, extractives, and inorganic fractions that are present in different amounts. In the wood smoke such toxic compounds as PAH, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins 40 (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) 41 are detected.

Row 42  Alcalis                                 should be Alcalies

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper reviews about organic waste gasification by steam and/or carbon dioxide. In general, this paper is too long with outdated and unnecessary literatures. In order to be accepted for publication, a major improvement as follow should be conducted:  

1. What was the purpose of this review? The author should also highlight the differences of this review with the existing review article. What is/are the new perspectives offered in this review?

2. The introduction contains unnecessary background knowledge that has already been described in the existing literatures. Please restructure the contents, be more concise to the topic.

3. Please reconsider whether section 2.1 until 2.4 are needed. If is does, I suggest to relocate them to supplementary section.

4. “C + 0.5O2 = CO” Please replace the decimal with fraction number.

5. “Most of species in Table 1 are the reduced forms of full oxidation products.” The word “species” is inappropriate, kindly use other term.

6. Please reconsider to relocate the Section 2.6 and 2.7 to supplementary section. A good review article shouldn’t contain too many definitions as this will look like a book chapter rather than a review article.

7. “Low-temperature steam- and CO2-assisted allothermal gasification”, the chemical formula should be presented in proper form.

8. “The following is a summary of the research on low temperature H2O/CO2 gasification for the previous 20 years. Here, we put them in the chronological order.” Please remove the outdated literatures (more than 5 years) in this section. Please be noted that a review article should present/review the recent studies only. Covering the studies in the past 20 years will seem very informative, but this will also make your review article look like a history book chapter.

9. At the end of each sub-section, it would be better to add a short paragraph to present your perspective/summarize your own thoughts based on the information presented in that section.

10. The overall contents are too long, referring to my comment 8, please remove the outdated literatures.

11. The key messages from the literatures should be extracted and presented rather than repeating the information of the existing paper only. Review article is meant to be “reviewing” other’s work rather than just compiling/summarizing other’s work and combine them as own paper.

12. Section 3.3 (discussion) is too general. The “discussion” should be included at the end or within each of the sub-section.

13. “Excellent reviews of the publications on plasma gasification of wastes was previously reported in [49, 205–209].” Why this sentence? What was the purpose?

14. Same goes to Section 4.6, the “discussion” should be included at the end or within each of the sub-section.

15. The aspects of commercialization and economic feasibility should be included.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments. I have made my best to follow all of them and marked all changes in the text in blue.

This paper reviews about organic waste gasification by steam and/or carbon dioxide. In general, this paper is too long with outdated and unnecessary literatures. In order to be accepted for publication, a major improvement as follow should be conducted:  

1. What was the purpose of this review? The author should also highlight the differences of this review with the existing review article. What is/are the new perspectives offered in this review?

 I have stated the objectives more explicitly (see the end of section “Introduction”):

Thus, the objective of this review is to consider the selective studies on environmentally friendly, combustion-free, allothermal, atmospheric-pressure, noncatalytic, direct H2O/CO2 gasification of organic feedstocks like biomass, SSW, and MSW, and demonstrate pros and cons of the approaches and provide future perspectives. The main issue addressed is the effect of gasification temperature and H2O/CO2-to-feedstock ratio on the gasification efficiency, syngas quality and yield, as well as the feasibility of in-situ control of syngas composition. A new and promising technology of organic feedstock gasification by detonation USS is proposed to stimulate worldwide research. These objectives and issues are the novel and distinctive features of the present review.

2. The introduction contains unnecessary background knowledge that has already been described in the existing literatures. Please restructure the contents, be more concise to the topic.

3. Please reconsider whether section 2.1 until 2.4 are needed. If is does, I suggest to relocate them to supplementary section.

 Review articles are addressed not only to experts in the field but also to general unexperienced readers. Therefore, there is always a need in some notes regarding the subject discussed, specific terminology used, and other important qualitative and quantitative features involved. Also, a short chapter with background allows me to present a highly heterogeneous literature material within a unified conceptual approach.

4. “C + 0.5O2 = CO” Please replace the decimal with fraction number.

 Done

5. “Most of species in Table 1 are the reduced forms of full oxidation products.” The word “species” is inappropriate, kindly use other term.

 I replaced species by reactants

6. Please reconsider to relocate the Section 2.6 and 2.7 to supplementary section. A good review article shouldn’t contain too many definitions as this will look like a book chapter rather than a review article.

This probably would be O.K. if I do not specify the literature search approach and methodology limitations in section 2, in addition to the definitions of main terms and indices used in the paper.

7. “Low-temperature steam- and CO2-assisted allothermal gasification”, the chemical formula should be presented in proper form.

 Done

8.“The following is a summary of the research on low temperature H2O/CO2 gasification for the previous 20 years. Here, we put them in the chronological order.” Please remove the outdated literatures (more than 5 years) in this section. Please be noted that a review article should present/review the recent studies only. Covering the studies in the past 20 years will seem very informative, but this will also make your review article look like a history book chapter.

In my review, I have carefully highlighted all the major achievements over the past 20 years, made summarizing conclusions in two Discussion sections showing the pros and cons of existing approaches, and proposed a novel approach based on detonation-assisted gasification. To concisely confirm my conclusions, I included 3 tables with the most representative contributions. Unfortunately, the most of results included into the table are not very new: only a few newest publications considered in tables 2 to 4 are dated by 2013, 2000, and 2019, respectively, while others go back to 2006, 2013, and 2016. Moreover, nothing essentially representative has appeared in the literature on conventional low- and high-temperature gasification over the past 4-5 years, thus indicating a sort of saturation caused apparently by great difficulties. The latest results, discussed in the review but not included in the tables, dealt with issues of secondary importance that do not affect my conclusions. Based on the overview of long-term studies and experience I conclude that there is a need in developing a novel approach that is waste gasification by ultra-superheated steam produced by shock compression in cyclic detonation waves. My intention is to attract attention to this promising direction and to stimulate worldwide research.

9. At the end of each sub-section, it would be better to add a short paragraph to present your perspective/summarize your own thoughts based on the information presented in that section.

 After two sections on conventional low-temperature and high-temperature H2O/CO2 gasification, I made a provision for two discussion sections, where I make general conclusions indicating advantages and disadvantages of the existing gasification technologies. The last section is dedicated to the novel technology. Its advantages are discussed in the section itself and in conclusions.

10. The overall contents are too long, referring to my comment 8, please remove the outdated literatures.

As I mentioned in my response to comment 8, I have carefully selected the most important contributions to the corresponding gasification technologies out of about 800 international publications. I believe among the cited references there is no outdated research: each cited paper contributed considerably to the field. If I have lost any significant contribution, I would appreciate very much your reproof and include all lost references for the sake of objectivity. What is wrong with the length of the open-access review, if it covers most of the research details important for understanding its status?

11. The key messages from the literatures should be extracted and presented rather than repeating the information of the existing paper only. Review article is meant to be “reviewing” other’s work rather than just compiling/summarizing other’s work and combine them as own paper.

My way in writing the review is somewhat different. Among several or many findings of other authors I select only those which contribute to my topic. I do not discuss at all, say, the results on char gasification and other auxiliary studies (thermogravimetric analysis, etc.) present nearly in each cited paper. This means, that I do not simply repeat the information but represent it single-minded in a compact and summarizing form. I do not criticize the authors for their approach and results implying that they do their best to get a new knowledge. As a result, I come to a set of information sufficient for making a conclusion about the topic status.

12. Section 3.3 (discussion) is too general. The “discussion” should be included at the end or within each of the sub-section.

 My review is only aimed to show that conventional approaches to waste gasification run into many problems. Possible solutions of these problems will increase the cost of corresponding technologies. Therefore, instead of discussing all the problems in each sub-section, I name only the major ones in the two Discussion sections.

13. “Excellent reviews of the publications on plasma gasification of wastes were previously reported in [49, 205–209].” Why this sentence? What was the purpose?

 The purpose was to provide an interested reader with some key references on this specific topic.

14. Same goes to Section 4.6, the “discussion” should be included at the end or within each of the sub-section.

 Please, see my response to comment 12.

15. The aspects of commercialization and economic feasibility should be included.

At this point I am not ready to discuss these issues in the review. I explicitly write about it in the last sentence of the Conclusions.

Reviewer 4 Report

The advantages of the article: providing very wide presentation of the literature review concerning organic waste gasification problems.

The disanvantage of the paper is too detailed description of different methodes of waste gasification.

To get more readable result it would be better to put all metodes into the table, with references in one separate column. Besides that methods of gasification should have one separate section.

Section 6. Conclusions has rather shape of a Discussion section.

Conclusion section should have rather short the most important findings in presented study.

All definitions and abreviations, should be put  in a table as one section.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments. I have made my best to follow all of them and marked all changes in the text in green.

The advantages of the article: providing very wide presentation of the literature review concerning organic waste gasification problems.

The disanvantage of the paper is too detailed description of different methodes of waste gasification.

My approach to this review is as follows. First, among hundreds of relevant papers available in the literature I select only those which shed light to the specific topic I discuss. Second, for the selected contributions, I systematically indicate all experimental conditions and theoretical assumptions, so that a reader does not necessarily need to address the original text. Third, I briefly highlight the most important findings in each publication, which contribute to the field. Finally, I discuss various unresolved issues, implications, uncertainties, governing mechanisms, etc. In addition, after each section I provide a brief discussion section, which summarizes pros and cons of the corresponding approaches.

To get more readable result it would be better to put all metodes into the table, with references in one separate column. Besides that methods of gasification should have one separate section.

As for the table, when working on the review, I tried to construct it. The Table appeared too large and not informative at all because most of papers address only few issues of interest, and most lines and columns stay empty. Therefore, I decided to choose only most representative papers and include them in 3 tables to confirm my conclusions.

I consider 3 gasification methods: low-temperature, high-temperature, and detonation-assisted. Each method is thoroughly described in a separate section, namely:

• Low-temperature steam- and CO2-assisted allothermal gasification
• High-temperature steam- and CO2-assisted allothermal gasification
• High-temperature steam- and CO2-assisted allothermal detonation-based gasification.

To avoid confusion, I have placed “Contents” section ahead of the text.

Section 6. Conclusions has rather shape of a Discussion section.

Conclusion section should have rather short the most important findings in presented study.

I have shortened and reformulated conclusions.

All definitions and abreviations, should be put  in a table as one section.

I have moved the table with abbreviations to the beginning of the manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Accept

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 paper entitled"  Organic waste gasification: A selective review": is written like a report and summary, not a review paper. The whole structure needs to be modified carefully. I suggest rejection and resubmission. 

What is the meaning of the word "selective" in the title?

Lines 1 to 122: it is better to show different processes in the table format. Now is not understandable for the readers. 

Line 120: Are there any recent and updated books? The references 1-4 are too old. Now is 2021.

Reference 17 is not a review paper.

Section 2 is the definition and general information without any references. why we need this information which is too general?

Lines 500 to 3832: here is the main body of this review. In my opinion, it is not a review paper and only a summary of studies without any critical writing. I suggest writing this section in Table format to show the difference of each study in terms of parameters and results. These sections should be summarized and you may delete 50% of the writing here. 

Any suggestions for future studies by the author of this review?

Author Response

My responses are given to each reviewer's comment and marked in blue.

The paper entitled"  Organic waste gasification: A selective review": is written like a report and summary, not a review paper. The whole structure needs to be modified carefully. I suggest rejection and resubmission. 

What is the meaning of the word "selective" in the title?

With selective review I mean that this review confines itself to available information on specific approaches in organic waste gasification rather than on a wide variety of approaches. As an example of such a title (with word “selective”) for the review paper I could suggest one of my early co-authored reviews at https://doi.org/10.1016/0360-1285(91)90007-A (Gaseous detonations – a selective review). Thank you.

Lines 1 to 122: it is better to show different processes in the table format. Now is not understandable for the readers. 

In Introduction section, I mention 3 technologies of waste thermal treatment, namely, incineration, pyrolysis, and gasification. Thereafter in two successive paragraphs I discuss their pros and cons and arrive at the conclusion that the most promising technology is USS gasification. Finally, I discuss the ways of USS production. Sorry, I do not see here a room for a summarizing table. Thank you.

Line 120: Are there any recent and updated books? The references 1-4 are too old. Now is 2021.

There are several recent books with collection of articles, like “Gasification for Low-grade Feedstock,” Ed. by Y. Yun. IntechOpen, 2018. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.69788. However, books [1-4] still remain the main sources of information on the topic.

Reference 17 is not a review paper.

I guess, the reviewer means the sentence at the end of Introduction section:

In the literature, there are several excellent books on biomass, SSW and MSW management and the fundamentals of incineration, pyrolysis, and gasification technologies (see, e.g., [1–4]), as well as multiple reviews on feedstock pretreatment/aftertreatment, advanced autothermal and allothermal, catalytic and noncatalytic gasifier designs and performances [17, 45–62], and downstream technologies and syngas applications ([1–4, 63]).

I deleted the citation of Ref.17 here. Thank you.

Section 2 is the definition and general information without any references. why we need this information which is too general?

Review articles are addressed not only to experts in the field but also to general unexperienced readers. Therefore, there is always a need in some notes regarding the subject discussed, specific terminology used, and other important qualitative and quantitative features involved. Also, this chapter allows me to present a highly heterogeneous literature material within a unified conceptual approach.

Lines 500 to 3832: here is the main body of this review. In my opinion, it is not a review paper and only a summary of studies without any critical writing. I suggest writing this section in Table format to show the difference of each study in terms of parameters and results. These sections should be summarized and you may delete 50% of the writing here. 

As a matter of fact, nearly each paragraph in the review contains my own notes and interpretation of the published results. Firstly, among hundreds of papers I have selected only those which (from my own vision) shed light to the specific topic I discuss. Secondly, for the selected contributions, I systematically indicated all relevant experimental conditions and theoretical assumptions, so that a reader does not necessarily need to address the original text. Thirdly, I briefly highlighted the most important findings in each publication, which contribute to the field (again, according to my own vision). Finally, I discuss various unresolved issues, implications, uncertainties, governing mechanisms, etc. In addition, after each chapter I provide a brief Discussion section, which summarizes pros and cons of the corresponding approaches. As for the table, when working on the review, I tried to construct it. The Table appeared too large and, moreover, I could not succeed with including all the miscellaneous information in a clear and consistent way. Therefore, I have chosen the present format for the manuscript. Thank you.

Any suggestions for future studies by the author of this review?

On my profound belief, future studies must be concentrated on USS gasification of organic wastes. This approach allows complete conversion of organic feedstocks to syngas of high quality without polluting the atmosphere and water bodies. This perspective is formulated in the Conclusions section. Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, an extensive literature review on gasification techniques of organic wastes is presented as well as an in-depth analysis of an ultra-superheated steam (USS) technology based on a national (Russian) patent co-authored by the Author. The review proposed is of high quality and very extensive. It is well organized and well written. Section on the USS technique and details on USS detonation gun are also well written and very useful for the readers. The author faces a very interesting and appealing research topic, deepening the organic waste gasification issue not only considering the theoretical studies, but describing the technologies involved and providing a reliable future perspective. For these reasons, the topics discussed in the paper justify the interest for the publication. The paper is of high quality. My congratulation to the Author.  My only suggestion is to add a table with all the acronyms used in the text to further increase readability of it. Moreover, the title could be modified to give more evidence of the in-depth analysis on USS technology in the paper.

Author Response

My responses are given to each reviewer's comment and marked in green.

In this paper, an extensive literature review on gasification techniques of organic wastes is presented as well as an in-depth analysis of an ultra-superheated steam (USS) technology based on a national (Russian) patent co-authored by the Author. The review proposed is of high quality and very extensive. It is well organized and well written. Section on the USS technique and details on USS detonation gun are also well written and very useful for the readers. The author faces a very interesting and appealing research topic, deepening the organic waste gasification issue not only considering the theoretical studies, but describing the technologies involved and providing a reliable future perspective. For these reasons, the topics discussed in the paper justify the interest for the publication. The paper is of high quality. My congratulation to the Author.  My only suggestion is to add a table with all the acronyms used in the text to further increase readability of it. Moreover, the title could be modified to give more evidence of the in-depth analysis on USS technology in the paper.

I have added a list of abbreviations. Thank you.

I have modified the title of the paper to “Organic waste gasification by steam and carbon dioxide: A selective review.” Thank you.

Reviewer 3 Report

The selective review includes detailed information regarding the different types of gasification. A few of the suggestions are:

1. If sections 3 and 4 can be presented in a tabular form with major milestones in chronological or technological order, it would be very clear and handy to the readers.
2. The main purpose of the review is to succinctly review recent progress in a particular topic. However, the manuscript is in a way directed to justify the patent in reference 39. I would suggest highlighting the pros and cons of all the technologies including detonation-based gasification.
3. The manuscript/review does not discuss or include any economic or financial aspect. Before deciding the suitability of the technologies, the economic aspect (pre-treatment and post-treatment included) is very crucial. If this aspect could be included for all the technologies, it would be very plausible.

Author Response

My responses are given to each reviewer's comment and marked in yellow.

The selective review includes detailed information regarding the different types of gasification. A few of the suggestions are:

1. If sections 3 and 4 can be presented in a tabular form with major milestones in chronological or technological order, it would be very clear and handy to the readers.

When working on the review, I tried to construct such a table. The Table appeared too large and, moreover, I could not succeed with including all the miscellaneous information in a clear and consistent way. Therefore, I have chosen the present format for the manuscript. Thank you.

1. The main purpose of the review is to succinctly review recent progress in a particular topic. However, the manuscript is in a way directed to justify the patent in reference 39. I would suggest highlighting the pros and cons of all the technologies including detonation-based gasification.

At the end of Chapters 3 and 4 I have included brief discussions of the pros and cons of low-temperature and high-temperature H2O/CO2 gasification technologies, respectively. I have then partly repeated those in the Conclusions section. As for the detonation-based gasification, its pros and cons I discuss at the end of the Conclusions section. I suppose it would be redundant to repeat it once again. Thank you.

1. The manuscript/review does not discuss or include any economic or financial aspect. Before deciding the suitability of the technologies, the economic aspect (pre-treatment and post-treatment included) is very crucial. If this aspect could be included for all the technologies, it would be very plausible.

Unfortunately, I am not an expert in economic aspects. I am going to address this issue together with my colleagues in the nearest future and prepare a separate paper. To follow this comment, I have added one sentence at the very end of text:

“Nevertheless, for further progress in this direction there is a need in a thorough economic analysis of organic waste H2O/CO2 gasification using the USS detonation gun technology.” Thank you.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revised version seems better. Even the author show objection to most of my comments. I accept that. while this comment must be applied before any final decision from me. 

Lines 500 to 3832: here is the main body of this review. In my opinion, it is not a review paper and only a summary of studies without any critical writing. I suggest writing this section in Table format to show the difference of each study in terms of parameters and results. These sections should be summarized and you may delete 50% of the writing here. 

I read your explanations in detail but I cannot see any new findings from reading these lines. They are like newspapers and are not interested in the readers of an academic paper. In Table, you can easily see the difference between the studies and their weakness and strengths. 

Author Response

To follow the reviewer's comment regarding the inclusion of tables, I included 3 tables with the most representative experimental studies on low- and high-temperature H2O/CO2 gasification of carbonaceous materials in the corresponding discussion sections (see lines 3058-3067 and 3833-3840). All changes related to these revisions are marked in blue in the manuscript (3 tables and 2 paragraphs). Thank you.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The revised version still is not satisfactory. The authors must understand the concept of review is criticizing the existence literature review not only summarizing one paper in 10 or 20 lines without any proper conclusion. My question is how readers can learn when this review publish? Only see the summarization of the old studies? Even cited references in Tables are not recent. Mostly published in 2013-2017. We need to see the recent studies to make future recommendations. I don't want to repeat m comment and I can not accept the current form.

Sections 3.1.1, 3.1.2, and 3.1.3 must be summarized as Table. Also, the conclusion of the Table must be written (what authors found after reviewing the studies). 

Author Response

So far I have tried to find a consensus with the reviewer, but now it became clear to me that there would be no consensus.
I have my own vision for writing reviews, which differs from the vision of the reviewer. In my review (and this is an excellent and insightful review according to two other reviewers), I have carefully highlighted all the major achievements over the past 20 years and made summarizing conclusions in two Discussion sections showing the pros and cons of existing approaches to solving the problem. Following the reviewer's suggestion, I even included 3 tables in order to concisely confirm my conclusions. It is not my fault that the results included in the table are not very new. The fact is that nothing essentially new has appeared in the literature over the past 4-5 years. Even this last fact can be regarded as an indicator of an apparently dead-end direction. The latest results, discussed in the review but not included in the tables, dealt with issues of secondary importance that do not affect my conclusions. That is why in the last section of my review I offer a completely new and promising solution to the problem to stimulate wordwide research in this direction.
I believe that in such a situation, when further correspondence with the reviewer is futile, the editorial board of the journal must make a decision.

Round 4

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author,

I understand what you mean and I don't have any conflict of interest with your research. This is just a different point of view. Still, I have a problem with this style of reviewing the literature, So, I think your paper is not qualified for publication. maybe the editor can make the final decision. 

I can not accept the review summarizing each paper in 20 lines. My question is: did you need all those information in your review paper? Have they related to the scope of this review? I don't think so. 

If you say there are no updated studies in the last 4 and 5 years, why do you think this topic would be interesting for readers in the future? 

I found some similarities in the paper published by the author in 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2020.116195

The level of self-citation also is too high and must be reduced.