Global research trends on bioflocculant potentials in wastewater remediation from 1990 to 2019 using a bibliometric approach

The preference of biofloculants over chemical flocculants in water and wastewater remediation systems has gained wider attention due to their biodegradability, innocuousness, safety to human and environmental friendliness. The present study aimed to evaluate research outputs on bioflocculant potentials in wastewater remediation from 1990 to 2019 using bibliometric analyses. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric report in bioflocculant research. The subject bibliometric dataset was extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) and Scopus using the Boolean, ‘bioflocculant* and waste*’ and analysed for indicators such as a yearly trend, productivity (authors, articles, country, institution and journal source), conceptual framework and collaboration network. We found 119 documents with 347 authors from 78 journal sources on the subject, an annual growth rate of 12·1%, and average citations/document of 15·08. Guo J. and Wang Y. were the top researchers with 15 and 12 outputs respectively. China (42%) and South Africa (9·24%) ranked the top two dominant countries in the field. The top journals were Bioresource Technology (9 papers, 506 citations), Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (5 papers, 268 citations), whereas, the top institution was Chengdu University of Information and Technology (n = 9 documents) followed by Sichuan Univ. Sci. & Engn, China (n = 8 documents). This study found that lack of intercountry collaboration and research funding adversely affects research participants in the field.