A bibliometric analysis of research on arsenic in drinking water during the 1992–2012 period: An outlook to treatment alternatives for arsenic removal

A bibliometric analysis based on the Web of Science database was carried out to identify the global research related to arsenic in the drinking water field from 1992 to 2012 and to improve the understanding of the research trends in the same period. The results from the analysis reveal a linearly increasing number of annual publications and a high effort to find effective technical solutions to the problems caused by the presence of arsenic in water. The most relevant research aspects of the four main technologies applied to arsenic removal from drinking water (coagulation, flocculation and precipitation followed by filtration; adsorption and ion exchange; membrane-based processes and biological treatments) were summarized in this paper, with adsorption appearing to be the alternative that has received most attention according to the research trends during the studied period.