Environmental Sustainability from Waste to Resource: A Bibliometric Analysis of Municipal Solid Waste Incinerated Bottom Ash Research

Abstract

Municipal solid waste (MSW) generation has risen steadily with higher incomes, rapid urban growth and economic activity, and is expected to reach about 3.4 billion tonnes a year by 2050. Waste-to-energy (WtE) incineration is now widely used to cut waste volume and recover energy, and India has been adding such plants under programmes like the Clean India Mission. The bottom ash left after incineration makes up roughly 80 to 90 percent of the residue. Reusing it also supports several Sustainable Development Goals, mainly SDG 11, 12 and 13, by saving natural aggregates and reducing the land needed for disposal. This paper reviews global research on MSW incinerated bottom ash (MSWIBA or MIBA) using a bibliometric approach based on the Web of Science Core Collection (SCI and SCI E). After the export was cleaned of unrelated records from 110 to screened 69 papers published between 2004 and 2023 were analysed in Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer. We examined document type, yearly output, subject area, source journals, publishers, authors, language, keywords, citations and contributing countries. The 69 papers received 1065 citations in total (about 15.4 per paper; corpus h-index 19), and output rose sharply after 2020. China leads the field, followed by a group of European countries together with India and Taiwan, and Construction and Building Materials is the most active journal. The keyword data show the focus moving over time from heavy-metal leaching and basic characterisation towards reuse, geopolymerisation and supplementary cementitious applications. A short thematic review of the wider literature is added to place these numbers in context.