Removal of Antimony in Wastewater by Antimony Tolerant Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria Isolated from Municipal Sludge
, Gege Zhang 1,2,3, Ziqi Bian 1,2,3, Fanfan Guo 1,2,3, Li Wang 1,2,3, Ruiqing Chai 1,2,3, Shuqi Zhang 1,2,3, Zhenyu Cui 1,2,3, Shiwei Wang 1,3,* and Jun Zhang 1,2,3,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The ms. describes an interesting enrichment/pure culture system which removes SB from wastewater.
The overall science is very good.
The observation that E. coli makes up much of the enrichment culture is interesting. Wonder if it really means anything. It should.
Section 3.1. It is fairly easy to separate E. coli from SRB. One thing that would help would be to use a medium better than Postgate's B for culture of SRB.
The scientific English needs extensive revision. Some suggestions follow but the authors must attend to this in the rest of the ms.
lines 13-14 Change to "environmental problems.".
line 18 "a Sb-tolerant".
line 19 and elsewhere Specific bacterial names, e. g., E. coli.need to be in italics.
line 21 Don't capitalize sp. names; here "oxamicus".
line 22 "named SRB49 exhibited the highest Sb(V) removal activity. SRB49 removed 95% of....".
line 24 "and initial redoxpotential of 145-229 mV.".
line 26 and elsewhere Use subscripts as needed "Sb2S3".
line 27 "for SB remediation.".
lines 32-33 With rapidly increasing use, Sb is now the ninth largest metal mined in....".
line 36 "and the highest mining activity....".
line 38 "and human health".
lline 42 "Therefore, treatment of Sb....".
line 46 I'm unsure of the meaning of the phrase starting with "but less process complexity".
line 50-51 "with Sb(v) and Sb(III) the predominant".
line 52 "Sb(V) to Sb(III)".
line 53 "of the Sb(III) precipitate Sb2S3 (stibnite), which decreases....".
lines 55-56 "by SRB in various anaerobic environments". Are 7 references actually needed to support this statement?
lines 58-59 "sulfate [8] enhanced the....".
line 60 "ore was as high as".
line 61 "concentrations". Also how are the two statements, including the last one "which may be due...." linked?
line 64 "enrichment cultures".
line 68 ""were reported".
line 77 "Fe0"; use superscripts where appropriate, too.
line 79 "about precipitation and removal of Sb(V)".
line 80 ""based on".
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript evaluates the removal of antimony from wastewater samples by an antimony-tolerant sulfate-reducing bacteria isolated from municipal sludge. The research idea is good, however, the experimental data were not statistically analyzed properly to draw a meaningful conclusion. Therefore, I recommend the authors to perform major revisions according to my comments before accepting the manuscript.
Major comments
Introduction
Lines 83-85 In this study, we enriched and isolated Sb-resistant SRB strains from municipal sewerage, optimized the treatment parameters to remove Sb(V) from wastewater and 84 analyzed the mechanisms of Sb(V) removal.
I believe that the parameters were experimentally optimized and you din not used an optimization method to analyze the results obtained experimentaly. In this sense, you must mention that the data were experimentally optimized.
Results
- Change removal rate with removal efficiency
- Graphs in different grays are hard to follow. Please add them in colors.
Materials and Methods
- Line 300-301 The synthetic wastewater was prepared by adding g potassium pyroantimonate solution to the modified Postgate B medium to reach a final Sb(V) concentration of 100 mg/L.
Replace by
The synthetic wastewater was prepared by adding the necessary amount (g) of potassium pyroantimonate solution to the modified Postgate B medium to reach a final Sb(V) concentration of 100 mg/L.
- Line 305 – 307 For the analysis of Sb removal activity of the purified SRB strains, the SRB strains of 3×108 CFU were inoculated into synthetic wastewater and incubated as described above.
Do you mean 3×108 CFU/g?
- Line 312-313 All the batch experiments were conducted in triplets in a parallel mode.
Please add if the data are included as standard error means or standard deviation and replace triplets by triplicate.
I do not understand what does parallel mode means
- Throughout text triplets means triplicate?
- Chemical analysis and statistical analysis
I do not see any statistical analysis description and no results indicating the statistical analysis. I suggest to statistically analysing all the presented data with ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) followed by an appropriate post-hoc test to find out the significant differences of the applied treatments
Conclusions
There is no such section and it should be added.
Minor comments
You should use superscript or subscript, e.g. chemical formulas
Strains should be written in italics
Minor english revisions are necessary
Add 2-4 references from 2020-2021
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
