A Bibliometric Description of Lignin Applicability for the Removal of Chemical Pollutants in Effluents

Abstract

Several industrial sectors produce tons of effluents daily containing a high amount of hazardous chemical pollutants that pose a major threat to the environment and human health. Current wastewater treatment methods, such as flocculation and activated carbon adsorption, have drawbacks linked to high material cost and too much energy consumption. Thus, the search for renewable, biodegradable, and efficient materials has been the object of research aimed at replacing the conventional materials used to cheapen processes and reduce environmental impacts. Lignin stands out in this context as it has low cost and high availability. Therefore, several scientific researches were developed to harness the potential of lignin, especially as adsorbent, for the removal of chemical agents from effluents. This paper presents a bibliometric review performed on the Scopus database, showing the evolution of studies related to the applicability of lignin in the removal of chemical pollutants in waters over the last five years. Data regarding annual publications, languages, journals, countries, institutions, keywords, and subjects were analyzed. The realized screening selected 130 articles that met the previously defined criteria. Results indicated a strong collaboration between countries and China's substantial contribution to the documents. The analysis also has shown that lignin is mainly used as adsorbent material, sorbent, flocculant agent, and hydrogel and presents important results and information for future researchers on this topic.

Applications of cellulose-based agents for flocculation processes: a bibliometric analysis

“…Every day, manufacturing industries produce large volumes of wastewater that, due to the presence of barely biodegradable and persistent contaminants, alter the physical, chemical and biological properties of natural water bodies (Teles et al 2020). Some of these contaminants are also harmful to human health (Kasonga et al 2021).…”

“…Remediation techniques, whose choice depends on the type of wastewater, include, among others, sedimentation, ionic exchange, biodegradation, adsorption on activated carbon, filtration, and chemical oxidation. Usually, none of such methods can offer a stand-alone solution and they need to be continuously revised, complemented and improved to address the new emerging contaminants (Verma et al 2012;Teles et al 2020).…”