Manuscript ID: NJ-ART-11-2024-004953
Title: Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide Modified Magnetic Apricot Shells for Removing Congo Red Dye and its Artificial Neural Network Model

Overall, the manuscript is interesting, well written with some important results. However, the manuscript should be revised carefully based on the following points to consider it for publication in “New Journal of Chemistry”
• Abstract: Important characterization results and adsorption mechanism to be added. Please revise.
• Introduction, Literature review part showing the importance of adsorption technology could be better and more appropriate, please check following articles (ChemistrySelect, 2023, 8:e202300928; Chemical Physics Letters, 2023, 830:140820; Journal of Molecular Liquids, 2023, 387:122610) for further improvement.
• The novelty of the study is not properly highlighted in introduction. Why Fe3O4@Ap/CTAB was fabricated? How the composite is better than all the parent materials? Please add. Please check https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jics.2024.101407 for reference.
• What is the role of CTAB in the composite?
• Introduction Last paragraph. Scope of the study to be elaborated.
• Purity of chemicals to be added in material section.
• Development of Artificial neural network (ANN) optimal model: What percentage data was used for validation? Why 80% data were used for training and 20% for testing?
• XRD pattern: Why large broad peak of raw AS is not present in the composite?
• Table 3: The comparison of the adsorbent of present work with other existing adsorbents should be revised to highlight the advantages and uniqueness of the adsorbent considering adsorption capacity, contact time and other variables. Please check https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwpe.2024.105699; https://doi.org/10.1080/01932691.2022.2110110,
• Optimum ANN architecture is not shown in Fig. Please check https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molliq.2016.04.009.
• Why all the experiments were conducted on synthetic wastewater. Real sample can be studied using the developed adsorbents.
• Please check the English once again for grammatical errors, formatting issues like subscript etc.

Acceptable