Passive Sampling with Active Carbon Fibres in the Determination of Organic Pollutants in Groundwater

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper does not identify clearly implications for research, practice and society, in that sense, I suggest you provide some information, which will increase the manuscript value.
I recommend to the authors a review of some relevant aspects about some misinterpretation and citations to justify the purpose of this manuscript and reorganize some topics and phrases in order to give continuity in certain thoughts There are some considerations in the literature which can help you to improve the final version of this manuscript and were not described in the text. I suggest mentioning the study's originality and the novelty it brings to the field to point the difference in other studies. I recommend including information regarding advantages, limitations, the number of samples that could be analysed/interval of time, costs, etc., this will increase the manuscript value.
I recommend stating clearly the conclusions of the study to enrich your work. The authors must underline the major findings of their work and explain how the use of their proposed procedure represents progress to other similar published papers.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you all for the detailed review of our paper. We have considered all your comments and rewritten the text accordingly. Your correction and suggestions have improved the quality of the manuscript by making it much more detailed and clearer. For some comments selected parts of the sentences or paragraphs were corrected, but in some cases, we found it better to rewrite the entire chapter in accordance with your comments (namely conclusions) in order to make the content clearer for the readers. We hope this improved version of our manuscript will be accepted for publication. Below you can find answer to each comment.

We would sincerely like to thank you for your constructive comments.

Looking forward to your decision.

Best regards,

Anja Koroša

Response to reviewer 1:

The paper does not identify clearly implications for research, practice and society, in that sense, I suggest you provide some information, which will increase the manuscript value.

Authors: The article has been revised and modified following the suggestions of all reviewers. In the conclusions and introduction, we further highlighted the implications for research, practice and society.

I recommend to the authors a review of some relevant aspects about some misinterpretation and citations to justify the purpose of this manuscript and reorganize some topics and phrases in order to give continuity in certain thoughts.

Authors:   The article has been revised and modified following the suggestions.  

There are some considerations in the literature which can help you to improve the final version of this manuscript and were not described in the text.

Authors:   We followed the suggestion.  We reviewed once again similar literature and included the findings in the introduction to this concluding article.

I suggest mentioning the study's originality and the novelty it brings to the field to point the difference in other studies.

Authors:   We have added this aspect in the introduction and conclusions.

I recommend including information regarding advantages, limitations, the number of samples that could be analysed/interval of time, costs, etc., this will increase the manuscript value.

Authors:  The manuscript has been revised and modified as suggested. Additional informations were added in the section 2.2. Sample preparations.

I recommend stating clearly the conclusions of the study to enrich your work.

Authors:   The conclusion was rewritten and refined.

The authors must underline the major findings of their work and explain how the use of their proposed procedure represents progress to other similar published papers.

Authors:   The major findings  were added in conclusions of revised paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I have some comments and suggestions to the authors:

1. The study is original and interesting and it is performed at a traditional level typical for analytical studies. Some new options for sampling and pollutant collection deserve interest since the analytical methods are well-known and documented.
2. I believe that such a study could be much more effective and intriguing if an experimental design is applied to clarify and model the impact of the different experimental conditions (mentioned in the manuscript) to the analytical signals and procedure.
3. The data collected from groundwater samples could be used for multivariate statistical modeling in order to identify sources of pollution in the environment (in the present study qualitative assumptions about pollution sources are presented).
4. Some printing errors should be eliminated (e.g. hydro- instead of hidro- etc)

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you all for the detailed review of our paper. We have considered all your comments and rewritten the text accordingly. Your correction and suggestions have improved the quality of the manuscript by making it much more detailed and clearer. For some comments selected parts of the sentences or paragraphs were corrected, but in some cases, we found it better to rewrite the entire chapter in accordance with your comments (namely conclusions) in order to make the content clearer for the readers. We hope this improved version of our manuscript will be accepted for publication. Below you can find answer to each comment.

We would sincerely like to thank you for your constructive comments.

Looking forward to your decision.

Best regards,

Anja Koroša

Response to reviewer 2:

1. The study is original and interesting and it is performed at a traditional level typical for analytical studies. Some new options for sampling and pollutant collection deserve interest since the analytical methods are well-known and documented.

2. I believe that such a study could be much more effective and intriguing if an experimental design is applied to clarify and model the impact of the different experimental conditions (mentioned in the manuscript) to the analytical signals and procedure.

Authors: The suggestion has been taken into account and included in the additional explanations in section 3.1. Design and use of passive samplers with ACF in groundwater.

3. The data collected from groundwater samples could be used for multivariate statistical modeling in order to identify sources of pollution in the environment (in the present study qualitative assumptions about pollution sources are presented).

Authors: The data collected from groundwater samples obtained by passive sampling technique could be used for different multivariate statistical modeling to identify sources of pollution in the environment, but in this paper the main aim of study was to set up the method and describe it for a single shot detection of a broad range of organic compounds in relatively clean natural waters as simple and as cheap as possible.

Some studies about the use of passive samplers have already been published by different researches Mali et al. (https://0-www-sciencedirect-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0048969717306873?via%3Dihub) and Trček et al. (https://0-www-sciencedirect-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S004313541731031X).

4. Some printing errors should be eliminated (e.g. hydro- instead of hidro- etc).

Authors:  English was one more time proofread by native speaker.

Reviewer 3 Report

In this case, I think it is fine for readers.

No further comments.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you all for the detailed review of our paper. We have considered all your comments and rewritten the text accordingly. Your correction and suggestions have improved the quality of the manuscript by making it much more detailed and clearer. For some comments selected parts of the sentences or paragraphs were corrected, but in some cases, we found it better to rewrite the entire chapter in accordance with your comments (namely conclusions) in order to make the content clearer for the readers. We hope this improved version of our manuscript will be accepted for publication.

We would sincerely like to thank you for your constructive comments.

Looking forward to your decision.

Best regards,

Anja Koroša

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been significantly improved including the English quality.