Author response

Partial oxidation of methane with sol gel Fe/Hf/YZS catalyst in dielectric barrier
discharge: catalyst activation by plasma
Submitted to the Journal of Rare Earths

1. Thank you very much for the suggestions from reviewer in case of catalyst structure of YSZ.
We did not explain before in the previous manuscript and in this revised manuscript, we
have changed and added some information. In the picture of spectrum of XRD, in the
revised manuscript, we included the comparison between supported-only catalyst (pure
YSZ) and 30% Hf-YSZ. It is important to show that there is no significant change on the
crystal structure of the catalyst caused in the experiment we used pure YSZ (also
commercialized YSZ) as the basis comparison. Some additional information have been
attached in the picture and also little explanation on the interpretation of the spectrum. Hf
peak is quite small although the concentration is relatively higher. In case of Fe, it was
difficult to detect 1% of Fe using XRD. We used Mosbaur spectroscopy to detect it. Actually,
we did not much give attention on the catalyst property itself. The application to produce
methanol is the main concern in this paper where we used plasma method to activate the
catalyst.
2. Again, thank you very much for the correction from the reviewer. We are sorry not to check
or finalize the abstract before submitting this manuscript to the Journal. So, in this case we
confirm that what the argument of the reviewer is correct. By adding the catalyst, in some
cases, the production of CO and CO2 was not decreasing, for example PAO case. We
deleted the sentence which was previously said that the production of CO and CO2 was
suppressed by the addition of catalyst. Quite difficult to get the trend to explain the whole
cases of the catalytic phenomena, which results the fluctuation in of the product, e.g. H2.
So, in this case we concentrated on the explanation of CO and CO 2 as the comparative
explanation of the reaction phenomena, instead of methanol.

Regarding the information of the 1st author, here, the full data:
Full name : Antonius Indarto
Sex : Male
Degree : Doctor
Title of tech. position : Researcher
Interested field : Plasma physic and plasma chemistry process