Abstract Over the last few decades, steady growth in desalination literature has been observed. However, conducting a quantitative analysis of this literature is still a novelty. This study aimed at carrying out a quantitative analysis of desalination literature published during the last 30 years, using bibliometric and content analysis techniques, based on the Web of Science database. The bibliometric analysis revealed that desalination has received much attention after the year 2000, as 95.4% of literature has been published in two decades after 2000. The text mining analysis showed that the hot themes of desalination research are reverse osmosis optimization, graphene implications, interfacial polymerization, capacitive deionization, carbon nanotube implications, and antifouling techniques. Furthermore, it was observed that many desalination technologies have emerged recently that make it a challenge to choose the right desalination technology for industrialization. Therefore, this study also contributed to identifying the factors that are important for the industrialization of desalination technologies and, based on these identified factors, this study has compared different desalination technologies to unearth the energy-efficient and low production cost technology. Analytical hierarchy process was used for comparing existing desalination technologies based on eight different parameters and it demonstrated that reverse osmosis is the best available technology for desalination.

中文翻译：

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用于节能和低成本水生产的海水淡化技术：文献计量分析

摘要 在过去的几十年中，人们观察到海水淡化文献的稳步增长。然而，对这些文献进行定量分析仍然是一个新事物。本研究旨在基于 Web of Science 数据库，使用文献计量和内容分析技术对过去 30 年发表的海水淡化文献进行定量分析。文献计量分析表明，海水淡化在 2000 年后备受关注，95.4% 的文献发表于 2000 年之后的 20 年。文本挖掘分析表明，海水淡化研究的热点主题是反渗透优化、石墨烯含义、界面聚合、电容去离子、碳纳米管影响和防污技术。此外，据观察，最近出现了许多海水淡化技术，这使得为工业化选择合适的海水淡化技术成为一项挑战。因此，本研究还有助于确定对海水淡化技术产业化具有重要意义的因素，并根据这些确定的因素，比较不同的海水淡化技术，以挖掘出节能和低生产成本的技术。层次分析法用于比较基于八种不同参数的现有海水淡化技术，表明反渗透是海水淡化的最佳可用技术。本研究还有助于确定对海水淡化技术工业化具有重要意义的因素，并基于这些确定的因素，比较了不同的海水淡化技术，以挖掘出节能和低生产成本的技术。层次分析法用于比较基于八种不同参数的现有海水淡化技术，表明反渗透是海水淡化的最佳可用技术。本研究还有助于确定对海水淡化技术工业化具有重要意义的因素，并基于这些确定的因素，比较了不同的海水淡化技术，以挖掘出节能和低生产成本的技术。层次分析法用于比较基于八种不同参数的现有海水淡化技术，表明反渗透是海水淡化的最佳可用技术。