Machine learning-based global trends and the development prospects of wastewater treatment: A bibliometric analysis.

Wastewater treatment is important for pollutant reduction and reclaimed water production. Machine learning is increasing applied in environmental field for deciphering variables' relationships and processing large datasets. However, multifarious sewage treatment systems, technologies and data processing methods led to the widespread application of machine learning in wastewater treatment. Here, we evaluated a total of 398 publications focus on machine learning-based wastewater treatment from 1993 to 2022 using bibliometric method. We aimed to provide a quantitative analysis on research hotpots, global trends and development prospects of wastewater treatment. Results showed that the related topic began in 1993 and publications' number was significantly increased since 2018. In the past three decades, modeling-based prediction and optimization has always been a research hotspot in wastewater treatment, although the continuous increasing of multifarious research topics in this field. As the international collaboration network core, China published 22.9% of the literatures, followed by the United States (13.1%) and Spain (9.36%). Water Research is the most productive journal with 22 publications containing research articles and review papers. Pollutant and antibiotics removal prediction, and neutral network based regression prediction are three independent research categories. Future research focus will still be on modeling-based wastewater treatment prediction and optimization. The findings provide an important reference and international overview to recognize the potential opportunity for researchers whom are working on machine learning based wastewater treatment and related projects. [Display omitted] • Publications on machine learning-based wastewater treatment from 1993 to 2022 were evaluated. • The continuous increasing of multifarious research topics was found in this field. • Modeling-based prediction and optimization has always been a research hotspot. • China is the collaboration network core and Water Research is the most productive journal. • Three typical independent research categories were all focused on model prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]