Biosorción de metales pesados presentes en aguas residuales empleando cáscaras de cítricos: estudio cienciométrico

Abstract

Recently, studies have been carried out on the removal of heavy metals present in tributaries, wastewater and effluents from the industrial and mining sectors. These studies focus on the monitoring of metals such as Cr, Ni, Cd, Pb and Hg due to their high toxicity and difficulty in their elimination. In order to find an effective and low-cost solution, the use of materials such as citrus fruit peels for the development of biosorption systems has been explored. These peels are common waste in regions of Colombia due to the high production and consumption of oranges, lemons and tangerines. In particular, a scientometric study has been carried out to identify the best raw material with high performance in the removal of heavy metals in the water sources of the departments of Norte de Santander and Santander. For this study, the PICO strategy was used to define a search equation, which was applied in the Scopus database. 325 articles with a total of 4636 citations were obtained. Tools such as the VantagePoint program for text mining and the VOSviewer program for visualizing bibliometric networks were used to analyze global research trends on biosorbents. China was identified as a leader in this field, while Colombia has 2 articles related to the subject. The scientometric study determined that there is great interest in the scientific community in the use of orange and lemon peels as biosorbent materials for the removal of heavy metals dissolved in water tributaries. Therefore, it can be concluded that orange and lemon peels are suitable raw materials for the biosorption of heavy metals such as Pb, Cr, Cd and Hg present in water.