Research hotspot and trend analysis of heavy metals decontamination of wastewater in past two decades: A bibliometric analysis

Heavy metals (HMs) pose a significant risk to human health. In the past century, due to the rise in industrial activities, numerous water resources have become polluted by HMs. Meanwhile, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies focusing on the removal of toxic substances from aqueous environments. Despite increased interest in this field, there is a lack of comprehensive studies that provide in-depth knowledge and quantitative studies of HMs adsorption from wastewater. This work used a systematic bibliometric analysis to investigate the existing gap in knowledge on the worldwide application research of HMs in wastewater treatment. The analysis was performed using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and Bibliometric, specifically focusing on the core collection database of Web of Science. A review was conducted on the literature, focusing on publishing patterns, academic fields, journals, nations, institutions, and authors. In addition, a thorough examination of keywords was performed to analyze their co-occurrence, clustering, and bursting trends. Most of the papers fall within the Environment Science category. Desalination And Water Treatment has the most publications (429), but the Journal of Hazardous Material has the greatest average citation number (118.59), indicating its importance as a platform for significant research. China is the top country in publishing 2263 articles, (41.80 %), in collaborations with other nations. Finally, the use of a keyword co-occurrence network atlas and literature co-citation network atlas provided valuable insights into the future direction of research in this field. These tools were employed to analyze research hotspots, research frontiers, and development trends.