Dual-fuel compression-ignition engines fuelled with biofuels. A bibliometric review

This study presents an up-to-date extensive bibliometric review, which has been performed to promote the behaviour mode use of biodiesel, biogas and hydrogen when applied over cargo transport using dual-fuel compression-ignition engines in the world, seeking a global perspective of technological advances in the study area, establishing the scientific gap and limitations for a cleaner transport sector through the correlations observed. The material collection was obtained through articles and reviews indexed in the Web of Science database, and the visualization map elaborated by VOSviewer software was used in this article. All types of documents in English were considered, in the period between 1945 and July 2020. The research was assisted with the softwares: Microsoft Excel, OpenRefine and VOSviewer. The results were discussed from the following perspectives: chronological distribution, most productive countries, articles contribution, periodic multidisciplinary, and cooperation between authors, countries, and articles. The results show that 253 research documents were found through 25 categories from Web of Science, among them 23 being experimental articles. The analysis of publication trends shows a modification stage from 1998 to 2020, with years 2012 and 2013 showing a small numeric drop and the growth of research concentrated in the last 7 years (2014–2020), representing approximately 78% of the total. India, China, and the United States are the top three researchers on biofuel field, responsible for almost 57% of publications. When it comes to the highest-ranking authors in the number of citations, Sweden, India, and China are working together to achieve a common goal. From keywords occurrence connections, it is possible to verify absence of words (fields) regarding to “Policies”, “Cost”, “Transport”, “Cargo”, “Infrastructure availability”, “Life Cycle Assessment” and “Social acceptance”. For future prospective, it is suggested that further articles be developed aiming at planning and implementing policies; cargo transport intended for the applicability of dual-fuel system; infrastructure availability and social acceptance; promoting a better understanding of science by the scientific community, business community and other segments of society; and also, to provide valuable information for further investigation. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.