Cation exchange of natural zeolites: Worldwide research

Abstract

Research on natural zeolites (NZ) has increased over the years, showing potential in different areas, and many of them involve cation exchange (CE), considered one of the essential properties of NZ. This work aims to identify studies’ cognitive structure based on the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of NZ through bibliometric analysis to evaluate scientific production, growth trend, and visualization through bibliometric maps using the VOSviewer software. All types of documents and all languages indexed in Scopus from 1970 to 2020 were considered for the database, obtaining 703 documents. The results indicate an increasing trend in CE annual publications in NZ. This analysis shows the most influential authors such as Daković, Wang and Colella, while the countries that stand out are China, Turkey and the United States. Besides, the bibliometric maps made it possible to understand the intellectual structure of this academic discipline, identifying areas of current and potential interest in this field of studies such as its application in medicine, agriculture, catalysts, heavy metal removal, wastewater treatment (WWT), bioremediation and construction. Finally, these studies showed trends in science and technology studies favoring environmental remediation and human health.