Trends of Filtration and Adsorption Technology Using Biomaterials from Agricultural Wastes: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to bibliometrically review the trends of literature related to agricultural wastes in the filtration and adsorption technology, published from 2016 to 2020 while providing future research directions. It includes removing suspended solids, chemical contaminants, and toxic gases from water, wastewater, and other industrial applications. A total of 206 published documents from the Scopus database, authored by 160 scholars across 63 countries, have been analyzed using Harzing’s POP (for analyzing the citations) and VOSviewer (for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks) program. The findings show that countries from Asia, mainly China, India, and Malaysia, dominate the publication in this field, with the Desalination and Water Treatment topping the journal list, followed by the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering and Science of the Total Environment. In terms of co-occurrence, the top author keywords are “agricultural wastes,” “water and wastewater treatment,” and “adsorption.” In addition, five research streams were identified, namely “biomass characterization and optimization,” “adsorbent for water and wastewater quality improvement,” “filtration by activated carbon,” “heat treatment for biochar,” and “bio-adsorbents kinetics, isotherms and thermodynamic.” Finally, the authors suggest potential research directions on filtration modeling for optimization, utilizing agricultural-based media for water and wastewater treatment.