Producción Científica

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed scientific literature on emerging contaminants published from 2000 through 2019. A total of 4968 documents (among research articles and review papers) collected from Scopus database were analyzed using the VOSviewer 1.6.11 software. According to our results, this topic has been capturing researchers’ attention over the years and the latter five years of the analysis timespan corresponds to the period of highest scientific productivity on this subject, when a 70.4% of all analyzed documents were published. United States, China, Spain, Italy and Canada were the top-5 most productive countries in terms of number of published works, while Science of the Total Environment, Chemosphere, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Environmental Pollution and Water Research stood out as the journals with the highest number of publications, gathering a 31% of papers and 34% of all citations. According to the frequency of author keywords, the main specific research topic assessed by the researchers are the occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in wastewater and the removal of such pollutants by the application of adsorption and advanced oxidation processes. Copyright (c) 2020, KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

Currently, the population is experiencing severe water stress mainly due to high water consumption by industries. Food and beverage processing consumes up to 90% of freshwater, resulting in large volumes of wastewater that is often treated with complex, costly and environmentally damaging processes. The purpose of this study is to perform the first bibliometric analysis to evaluate and discuss the evolution in the use of environmentally friendly technologies for wastewater treatment in food processing plants. A total of 606 documents published up to August 2022 were retrieved from Scopus. Data were manually standardized. VOSviewer version 1.5.18 and Bibliometrix version 4.0.0 were used to perform scientific mapping and evaluate bibliometric indicators of quantity, quality and structure. Scientific production is growing exponentially due to factors such as strict environmental policies and increased environmental awareness. The average number of authors per document is 4.056 and prolific authors in the field have not yet been defined. The contribution of the countries (led by the United States with 104 documents) was associated with their gross domestic product (GDP), level of trade and industrialization. Likewise, institutions from China (third place with 70 documents) have the highest contribution in the field. On the other hand, most of the journals where the documents were published are of high quality according to different metrics. According to the most influential articles, the frequency of keywords and their dynamics over time, the use of microalgae, microorganisms and plants for the treatment of effluents generated during food processing is the main trend. The processes also focus on the recovery or recycling of compounds of interest in wastewater such as phosphorus, nitrogen and carbon to contribute to the circular economy.