Current status and future research trends of biofiltration in wastewater treatment: A bibliometric review

Abstract

Purpose of Review: The development of various type of wastewater treatment technologies provides significant supports for environmental protection. Biofiltration, an attached growth system, shows remarkable performance in treating different types of wastewater worldwide. Differing from the existing comprehensive reviews published thus far, this review article focuses on the current prospects and future research trends of biofiltration in wastewater treatment through bibliometric analysis. The objective of the study is to analyze the applications of biofiltration in wastewater treatment in terms of the annual publications trend, most productive journals, leading authors, countries and affiliations, keywords, and the type of wastewater treated. Recent Findings: The findings clearly showed that there is an increasing trend in the annual publications of biofiltration in wastewater treatment in the period from 1969 to 2020. The analysis revealed that Water Research, Mr. Rocher, V (Rocher, Vincent), and China is the leading journal, author, and country in terms of total publications. Through the co-occurrence analysis of the author keywords, keyword such as “biofilter” was identified as the most frequently used author keywords with 213 occurrences and 178 links to other author keywords. Besides that, the findings also show that there are still lacking of studies related on the treatment of “refinery wastewater,” “pharmaceutical wastewater,” “coal gasification wastewater,” and “brewery wastewater” by using biofiltration system. Summary: Overall, the findings of this bibliometric analysis can be helpful information for industry practitioners and researchers that lead on water pollution control technologies.