Research status, trends, and mechanisms of biochar adsorption for wastewater treatment: a scientometric review

Abstract

AbstractIn the last decade, biochar application research has emerged as a hot topic in water treatment studies, which made biochar adsorption one of the primary wastewater treatment strategies. This paper presents a global bibliometric analysis of 2673 publications from the Web of Science database, spanning 2011–2022. For a comprehensive understanding of the research status and trends in biochar adsorption for wastewater treatment, the advanced quantitative and visual analysis tools (i.e., CiteSpace and ArcGIS) were employed. The results showed that China emerged as the leading country with the most published articles. The key research area is on the magnetic adsorption of biochar in wastewater. The articles summarized in the review demonstrated unequivocally that biochar can treat a wide range of wastewater even though the adsorption mechanisms of biochar on heavy metals, inorganic salts and organic pollutants in wastewater are not entirely consistent. The review further analyzes the factors affecting the performance of biochar in adsorbing pollutants from wastewater and the improvement measures of biochar functional characteristics, proposing the future research directions focusing on the improvement of the adsorption capacity of biochar products. The information synthesis and discussion would provide valuable insights on the historical, current, and future trends in biochar research, beneficial to solve the practical problems of water pollution and improve the quality of the environment.