Exploring the way forward: Current status and new upgrading trends of the research on microalgae-based wastewater treatment

Microalgae-related biological wastewater treatment has the potential to sequester carbon, reduce emissions and achieve recovery. This study presented a scientometric visualization of the literature on microalgae-based wastewater treatment over the past 10 years in the Web of Science Core Collection database using CiteSpace software. This study examined the relevant literature at the level of annual publications, authors, institutions, cocitations, countries, keywords, hot words and keyword clustering, among other scientific attributes, for the period 2013-2022 to provide an in-depth discussion on the current status and progress of research on the biological treatment of wastewater by microalgae. The results indicated that China, the United States, India, Spain, and Brazil were the five countries contributing the most to this field of study in 2013-2022. Research on microalgae-based wastewater treatment has grown rapidly, with microalgae cultivation, nutrient removal and microalgae biofuel production being the most common areas in the last decade. Combining microalgae-based wastewater treatment technologies with downstream microalgal biomass production could be a promising development. More attention should be focused on the optimization of wastewater treatment performance and technoeconomic analysis to achieve practical application of microalgae-based wastewater treatment. This study provided valuable insights for the microalgae-based wastewater treatment and common content analysis.