Global research trends in pharmaceutical wastewater from 1990 to 2023 using bibliometric analysis

Pharmaceutical wastewater is a kind of industrial wastewater which is difficult to treat. Its large-scale discharge and difficult to achieve harmless treatment will cause great harm to the environment. In this study, the research results of pharmaceutical wastewater from 1990 to 2023 were comprehensively analyzed by means of bibliometrics. This study used VOSviewer, CiteSpace and bibliometix R-package to analyze and draw 1060 retrieval results based on the Web of Science core collection database. The results show that the number of articles in the field of pharmaceutical wastewater was increasing year by year, and CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL was the most influential journal in this field. At the same time, pharmaceutical wastewater has a wide impact on the world, effectively promoting international cooperation. The analysis of highly cited articles and keywords shows that adsorption, photocatalysis and MBR were popular research technologies in the field of pharmaceutical wastewater during the selected period. In general, more research is needed in the future to improve the feasibility of this technology in engineering application and strive for the realization of sustainable development technologies. The fate of characteristic pollutants in pharmaceutical wastewater in the environment and the establishment of detection methods are also major challenges in this research field. [Display omitted] •The research results of pharmaceutical wastewater were conducted using bibliometric analysis.•Visualize current research results and discuss research trends and hotspots.•Adsorption, photocatalysis, and MBR are hot research topics in pharmaceutical wastewater treatment.•The migration and detection of characteristic pollutants is a major challenge.