Bioleaching and Selective Precipitation for Metal Recovery from Basic Oxygen Furnace Slag

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study focused on the use of microbes to recover metal from slag produced by the Linz-Donawitz process. The manuscript is well-written, and the study is interesting. The reviewer has a few minor comments for the authors.

1. What forms of these metal ions exist in the slag? And, following precipitation, what is the chemical state? Is it the zero valent state, hydroxides, or other insoluble forms? The text does not include this information.
2. Please include the method details for slag digestion or metal extraction prior to the ICP analysis
3. Line 95 – Be specific on the room temperature – it can vary depending on the location the study was conducted
4. Line 106 – Please avoid the use of “x” for the hydrated chemical formulas - CaCl2·2H2O MgCl2·6H2O…… is the correct way
5. Are the XRD assignments based on the library matches? If not, please provide relevant references.
6. Figure 2 –Y axes labels are missing for c and d
7. Figure 3 – Please include the error bars

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I think that this article has a very good, modern topic in metallurgical area,  especially recovery valuable metals from anthropogenic materials.  The article was presented  a studies of recovery metals such as Mn, Al, Cr, and V from basic oxygen furnace with used  bioleaching methods.

In the article not  sufficient of experiments was included. In the paper had not information of the efficiency calculation system, data prepared only in graphs - no sufficient data in tables and conclusions should be completed 

The article good topic and very good information was characterized. For me the article  a lot of good and new literature’s positions was included. 

For my opinion the Authors may be consider graphic improvement of the drawings, especially - figures 1,2,3  - the figures is complicated  – the figure 1 characterized of  low quality but the figures 2 and 3 is not so easy to  interpretation. 

I recommended this article after major correction to print.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I think that this article has a very good, modern topic in metallurgical area,  especially recovery valuable metals from anthropogenic materials.  The article was presented  a studies of recovery metals such as Mn, Al, Cr, and V from basic oxygen furnace with used  bioleaching methods. In the paper had not good conclusions - the conclusions should was completed 

The article good topic and very good information was characterized. For me the article  a lot of good and new literature’s positions was included. 

I recommended this article after minor correction to print.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx