Research progress of biochar’s application in environmental remediation based on bibliometrics

Based on bibliometrics, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the achievements of biochar applications in environmental remediation both at home and abroad, which had been widely concerned in recent years were conducted, and the overall situation of the research and the future key and hot research directions sorted out. The results showed that a total of 1 272 related Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) source papers were published from January 1, 2009 to September 1, 2019. The number of relevant articles increased year by year, with an average annual growth rate of about 273.67%. China’s total number of publications and independent publications ranked the first, with a total of 617 articles (48.51%). 40% of the top 15 authors were from China. However, there were fewer high-cited articles. The analysis direction showed that soil remediation, adsorption and heavy metals, etc. were the research hotspots in this field. The cluster analysis showed that nano-zero-valent iron, surface complexation, and fixed heavy metals were the three main research directions in the field of biochar enhanced remediation. It was suggested that biochar remediation of emerging pollutants in the environment, soil improvement and synthetic biochar-based nanocomposites might become the potential research hotspots in the future. And reducing costs to realize the transformation of production and process integration, performing systematic and comprehensive researches on the mechanism of biochar and pollutants, realizing the recycling and reuse of biochar, and formulating standardized application guidelines for biochar, etc. could be the focuses of further research.