The Kinetic Mechanism of the Thermal Decomposition Reaction of Small Particles of Limestone at Steelmaking Temperatures

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1, line 117, " the chemical composition of the sample was determined by XRD", I don't think XRD can do a composition analysis, and also you should include the content of loss on ignition (LOI).

2, line 124-125, the partial size distribution analysis should be provided. why the powder needs to be washed via ethanol which will sinter/accumulate the powder.

3, Figure 3. Since the TG curve is similar to O2/N2/Air, why the DTG of O2/Air are significantly different compared with N2.

4, Line 323-325, A thermodynamic analysis is suggested, considering the effect of activity/partial pressure of CO2 on the Gibbs free energy of the decomposition reaction. FactSage would be helpful.

 

Moderate editing of English language required: such as: "iron water" is not the right word to describe hot metal/liquid steel.

Author Response

Dear professor:

      Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Kinetic Mechanism of Thermal Decomposition Reaction of Small Particles of Limestone at Steelmaking Temperature” for publication in the Journal of Processes. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers. Those changes are highlighted in the manuscript. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on thermogravi-metric-differential thermal analyzer, the kinetic mechanism of decomposition of small limestone at steelmaking temperatures was investigated by a modified double extrapolation method. The research results of this article are innovative and forward-looking, and the test methods have certain reference value. The idea is interesting and the obtained result is valuable. This paper may be accepted if the following problems can be clarified.

1. Some sentences are too long to follow; it is suggested that to break them down into short but meaningful ones to make the manuscript readable.

2. For better readability, the authors may expand the abbreviations at every occurrence.

3. Some sentences have grammatical problems and should be checked and corrected. This paper can be shortened.

4. The references should be updated closely related and new references should be added and reviewed.

5. The originality in the introduction part should be strengthened.

6. Future research direction will be shown in Conclusion.

7. Every time a method is used for something, it needs to be justified by either (a) prior work showing the superiority of this method, or (b) by your experiments showing its advantage over prior work methods -comparison is needed, or (c) formal proof of optimality. Please consider more prior works.

 

1. Some sentences are too long to follow; it is suggested that to break them down into short but meaningful ones to make the manuscript readable.

2. Some sentences have grammatical problems and should be checked and corrected. This paper can be shortened.

Author Response

Dear Professor:

     Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Kinetic Mechanism of Thermal Decomposition Reaction of Small Particles of Limestone at Steelmaking Temperature” for publication in the Journal of Processes. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers. Those changes are highlighted in the manuscript. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx