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The evolving trends of landfill leachate treatment research over the past 45 years

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Abstract

Landfilling is one of the most prevalent waste management strategies on a global scale. However, one major drawback of landfills is the production of highly contaminated leachate which can harm ecosystems and pollute water resources which municipalities depend on. Various treatment options have been explored for treating leachate throughout the years. This paper aims to investigate landfill leachate treatment studies through bibliometric and visual analysis of articles collected from the Scopus database from 1975 to 2019. The results show that more than one thousand papers have been published in 159 journals. Nearly 3000 authors have published on the topic, most commonly from China, the USA, Malaysia, and Brazil. The keywords co-occurrence network led to the formation of 5 topical clusters, after which they were closely examined and titled “oxidation processes,” “nitrogen removal processes,” “constructed wetlands/coagulation,” “adsorption,” and “membrane-based processes” based on their contents. Finally, the overlay network was used to discern the hottest research trends. The results showed that advanced coagulation-based processes (such as peroxicoagulation) and studies focusing on improving membrane-based processes through reduction of membrane fouling are focal points which will be trending into the future.

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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Mir Amir Mohammad Reshadi & Morteza Nazaripour

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

    Sajad Soleymani Hasani

  3. Division of Sustainable Development, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Education City, Qatar Foundation, Doha, Qatar

    Gordon McKay

  4. School of Environment, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Bazargan

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  1. Mir Amir Mohammad Reshadi
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  2. Sajad Soleymani Hasani
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  3. Morteza Nazaripour
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  4. Gordon McKay
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  5. Alireza Bazargan
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MAMR: investigation; formal analysis; writing—original draft; SSH: investigation; formal analysis; writing—original draft; MN: investigation; validation; GM: project administration; AB: supervision; methodology; conceptualization; resources; writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Alireza Bazargan.

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Reshadi, M.A.M., Soleymani Hasani, S., Nazaripour, M. et al. The evolving trends of landfill leachate treatment research over the past 45 years. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 66556–66574 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14274-x

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