PCM-Impregnated Textile-Reinforced Cementitious Composite for Thermal Energy Storage
, Otavio da Fonseca Martins Gomes 2,3, Olga Maria Oliveira de Araújo 4, Ricardo Tadeu Lopes 4, M´hamed Yassin Rajiv da-Gloria 5, Romildo Dias Toledo Filho 5, Eddie Koenders 6, Antonio Caggiano 7, Christoph Mankel 6, Mona Nazari Sam 6, Rodolfo Giacomim Mendes de Andrade 8 and Saulo Rocha Ferreira 9,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Storing phase change materials in jute natural fiber textile for thermo-energy and mechanical retrofitting in the context of low carbon buildings: Part 1 - production and basic characterization
The work concerns the production of a construction and insulating material, which is intended to improve the comfort of residents by better insulation and mitigating the impact of ambient temperature changes on the temperature in the building. The article is divided into several parts and the first part does not include the most important results from the point of view of the proposed application of the produced material. The thermal conductivity and specific heat of the material are not measured.
Dividing of the work into two parts has no substantive justification and it is a deliberate action aimed at increasing the number of publications.
Other specific notes:
The work contains numerous language errors, e.g.
Line 1 - "improve energy efficiency" - Energy efficiency of what?
Line 16 – “energy efficiency offers” – “energy efficiency” is the characteristic of a specific process. "Energy efficiency" alone does not offer anything, it is not "fastest and most cost-effective action". Only an increase in "energy efficiency" can give some beneficial results, e.g. lower consumption of energy from burning fossil fuels. There is more similar vague language at work.
Materials with several packing densities of fibers in cement were not made.
The properties of PCM - specific heat, heat of vaporization, etc. - were not specified. - The effect of PCM on living organisms was not specified.
Line 48 - "sisal and jute fibers had their porosity to be 2.46, 10.85, 11.36 and 73.95 %," - too accurate. These are biological materials and their properties change to a large extent depending on the method of harvesting, storage, drying and age.
Line 112, 146, 150, 151 and others - the authors use an unusual way of writing "3 × 3 cm2" - this leads to ambiguity in several places - it should be "3 × 3 cm"
Subchapter 2.2.8. Thermal behavior of composites - the authors do not use a measurement method that would enable the determination of the basic thermal properties of material samples. Determining these properties would allow for numerical simulation of the behavior of the material at different temperatures and changes in external conditions - without repeating the experiments.
Lines 167, 171 - instead of 1h30m - write 90 min.
Subchapter 3.4 FTIR - This part of the article is superfluous because the chemical composition of the tested sample is known and no chemical reactions took place in it. It seems that the authors made this part for show. Nothing comes out of over 40 lines of text.
Figure 11 - Why do wavenumbers have a minus sign?
Figure 12 and Table 3 - The "DTG main peak" values in the Table do not correspond to the peaks' temperature values in the graph. For the red curve the maximum is at ca. 437°C, for the blue 425°C, for the black 350°C
In Figure 15, on the right, arrows should show the location of the temperature sensors
Line 348 - "to the other conditions" - what does it mean?
Line 348-350 - "Composites containing PCM presented enhanced thermal capacity, which contributed to maintain indoor temperatures at the PCM's phase change temperature, 24°C." – the opinion is not supported by research. No experiment was shown in the work. These are the authors' wishful thinking.
Author Response
Firstly, the authors would like to thank you for your time and commentaries,
in which we agree. Please, find the following content inserted in the revised
version of the text.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In this manuscript, Saulo Rocha Ferreira et al. report a PCM-incorporated XSBR-coated textile-reinforced cementitious composite with thermal energy storage properties and good mechanical behavior. The manuscript is well written, experimental details are well described, and all the results are well presented. I recommend that this manuscript be published after minor revision.
Comment 1. XSBR needs to be abbreviated when it first appears in the introduction.
Comment 2. Please clarify if liquid PCM is PCM under 24 oC? If yes, the immersion temperature in PCM should be indicated in the manuscript.
Comment 3. (Line 177) mm2 is not the unit for diameter, the authors should check the values and units.
Comment 4. (Line 330) What is the possible reason for the similar heat release profiles of the reference and the PCM-impregnated plate?
Author Response
Firstly, the authors would like to thank you for your time and commentaries,
in which we agree. Please, find the following content inserted in the revised
version of the text.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The article, titled: "Storing phase change materials in jute natural fiber textile for thermo-energy and mechanical retrofitting in the context of low carbon buildings: part 1 - production and basic characterization.", focuses on the use of jute natural fiber textile in concrete as a layer to support thermal insulation. The article is interesting and follows the current research topic concentrated around the reduction of CO2 emissions some elements of the article need improvement. The abstract included in the article doesn’t occutate the requirements of the journal's website and needs improvement - please check the publisher's guidelines. The purpose of the research contained in the article should be clearly stated and supported in the conclusion. Also consider whether the proposed article would better meet the scope of another journal, e.g. Materials or Buildings.
Author Response
Firstly, the authors would like to thank you for your time and commentaries,
in which we agree. Please, find the following content inserted in the revised
version of the text.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The title of the manuscript "Production and Characterization of a Low Carbon Building Material: An Approach for Storing Phase Change Materials in Jute Textile-Reiforced Cementitious Composite" is too long and misleading.
First, "Low Carbon Material" is redundant. The title suggests some low CO2 emissivity feature of the produced material. However this material contains cement, which requires a lot of energy to produce.
Secondly, the part of the title after the colon is more appropriate. However, I would replace "An approach for" with "Research on".
The authors made cosmetic corrections to the manuscript. The main objections to the over-abundance of the research reported remain. If it is in the "Textles" journal, there should be no tests of heat conduction and strength of cement-jute material. However, there should be tests of material strength and heat conductivity depending on the number of layers of jute.
In response to the reviews, the authors posted a table with the properties of the PCM substance that they impregnated jute fibers with. They should include this data in the manuscript and explain what the terms "Total heat capacity, melting" and "Total heat capacity, crystallization" mean. Does this mean the enthalpy of the material?
There is no reply to comment no. 12.
The authors have included image files unrelated to the topic of the manuscript in "supplementary files".
Other comments:
Namely, in several captions to drawings and in one drawing the letter "FL" is inserted.
For example:
Figure 6. FLHot box methodFL FLThermal behavior testFL
Figure 9. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the polymer coating on the jute fabrics: leakage of (a) in natura jute yarn and (b) XSBR-coated jute yarn, FLand FL (c) mass and layer FLgain FL FLthickness FL during treatment and (d) mass loss after treatment. FL
Figure 11. FTIR spectroscopy of untreated and treated jute FLyarnFL FLyarnsFL
Figure 12. Thermogravimetric analysis curves: TG and DTG of raw and treated jute FLYarnFL FLyarnsFL .
Figure 13. Four-point bending test of FLXSBR coated FL FLXSBR-coated FL jute fabric composite.
Figure 15. Temperature profiles of FLsurface of FL studied composites submitted to FLHotbox test FL FLthermal tests FL during heating and cooling FLphaseFL FLcyclesFL .
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a systematic study, and I recommend this manuscript for publication.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank you for your time and review.
