Bibliometric evaluation of nanoadsorbents for wastewater treatment and way forward in nanotechnology for clean water sustainability

Water is a necessity of life that needs to be treated, protected, and conserved. Bibliometric analysis as an indispensable roadmap in science and technology was conducted on nanoadsorbent research for wastewater treatment. Data sourced from the Scopus & REG;database from 1997 to 2020 were employed in this study. The analysis of the co-authorship of authors, organizations, and countries, co-citation of authors, citation of documents and sources, and co-occurrence of author keywords were performed using VOS viewer & REG; software. A total of 4873 research papers was published on nanoadsorbent for wastewater treatment which grew gradually over the years. This translated to scientific publications of 689 (14.14%), 894 (18.35%), and 1022 (20.97%) papers in 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. China was the leading country (1924 papers) with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences accounting for 28 publications as the top-ranked organization while Wang Y. published the highest number of research articles (127). These results revealed the importance of crossnational and international cooperation in this field with Environmental Science (2497 papers) ranked as the top-subject category. The co-citation of authors, citation of documents and sources showed that Wang Y., Gao L. (2007), and "Environmental Science and Technology" journal with citations of 3492, 2508, and 13651, respectively, were ranked highest. The most used keyword was "Wastewater treatment" with 593 occurrences. Research hotspots in the nanoadsorbents for wastewater treatment were summed up as application of nanoadsorbent to decontaminate different carcinogenic, mutagenic, and toxic compounds discharged from various processes. Future research lies in the implementation of nanoadsorbent for wastewater treatment from hospital effluents, household washing effluents, endocrine descriptive chemicals, and other emerging contaminants. Conclusively, this work suggests some important ways forward in nanotechnology and nanoadsorbents to ensuring clean water sustainability for developing and developed countries.& COPY; 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )