Trace the evolution path of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment technology based on a patent perspective

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the research hotspots and future development trends of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment technology, in order to provide valuable reference and guidance to promote the development of technology. First, the search path counting (SPC) algorithm is utilized to identify the global main path to perform a preliminary analysis of the technology evolution path from a macro perspective. Second, according to the life cycle, S-curve divides the time windows of the temporal themes and uses the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) modeling to identify the themes under each time window. Then, a visualized Sankey diagram is generated to determine the evolutionary relationship, which can be supplemented with the paths of technological evolution from the micro point of view. Finally, six research hotspots of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment technology were found, which are compounding agents, advanced oxidation technology, nanomaterials, artificial intelligence (AI) technology, membrane pollution prevention, and various combinations of wastewater treatment technology. The study also predicted its future development direction.