A bibliometric analysis of industrial wastewater treatments from 1998 to 2019

For the foreseeable future, industrial water demand will grow much faster than agriculture. The demand together with the urgency of wastewater treatment, will pose big challenges for most developing countries. We applied the bibliometric analysis combined with social network analysis and S-curve technique to quantitatively analyze 9413 publications related to industrial wastewater treatment in the Scientific Citation Index (SCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) databases from 1998 to 2019. The results showed that: (1) Publications on industrial wastewater treatment have increased from 120 in 1998 to 895 in 2019 with a steady annual increment rate, and researchers have focused more on the application and optimization of existing technologies. (2) China had the highest number of publications (n = 1651, 19.66% of global output) and was a core country in the international cooperation network, whereas the United States and European countries produced higher quality papers. (3) By analyzing the co-occurrence and clusters of keywords and comparing three wastewater treatment categories (physical, chemical, biological), adsorption (n = 1277), oxidation (n = 1085) and activated sludge process (n = 1288) were the top three techniques. Researchers have shifted their focus to treatment technologies for specific wastewater type, such as textile wastewater, pulp and paper wastewater, and pharmaceutical wastewater. The S-curve from articles indicates that physical and chemical treatment technologies are attached with great potential in the near future, especially adsorption and advanced oxidation, while the biological treatment technologies are approaching to the saturation stage. Different pattern is observed for the S-curve derived from patents, which stressed the limited achievement until now and further exploration in the field application for the three treatment categories. Our analysis provides information of technology development landscape and future opportunities, which is useful for decision makers and researchers who are interested in this area.