REVIEW ARTICLE

A bibliometric review of research trends on

bioelectrochemical systems
Juan Wang1, Tianlong Zheng1, Qunhui Wang1,*, Banghua Xu1 and
Lihong Wang2
1
Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 30 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District,
Beijing 100083, China
2
Department of Architectural Engineering, Handan Polytechnic College, 141 Zhuhe Road, Handan, Hebei 056001, China

hindered their industrial utilization. Therefore, it was

Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) have received wide-
spread attention for their capability of simultaneous only after 2002 that researches on BES achieved remark-
wastewater treatment and electricity or fuels/chemicals able improvements due to the discovery in 1999 by Kim
production. The present study was performed to eva- et al.3,4 of a mediator-less MFC using an Fe(III)-reducing
luate the global scientific output of BES-related bacterium Shewanella putrefaciens. In recent years,
research based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded many studies have been carried out on the electron trans-
database from 1991 to 2014. The publication outputs, fer mechanisms57 and methods to enhance the perform-
journals, subject categories, countries and institutes ance of BES8,9. Moreover, several review articles have
were analysed to identify the world research on BES. been published on the methodology10, substrates11 , recent
In addition, word cluster analysis was applied to give development1214, challenges15 and future applications16
an insight into the research trends on BES. The of BES reactors. However, a comprehensive statistical
results indicate that the annual publications on BES
review of the global BES-related research has not been
increased steadily, especially after 2004. China, with 7
institutes included among the 15 most productive in- reported to date.
stitutes, is the largest contributor on BES research Bibliometrics, first introduced by Pritchard17, is an effec-
during the past 24 years. Microbial fuel cell is the tive method that uses quantitative analysis and statistics
most frequently studied reactor, and electricity gene- to describe the research trend of a specific field. The bib-
ration and wastewater treatment are two dominant liometric method has been broadly applied to analyse the
applications of BES. The use of two nanostructured scientific production and research trends in numerous
materials carbon nanotubes and grapheme is in- fields, such as nitrate removal18, solid waste19, desalina-
creasingly studied in the BES field. tion20 and materials science21. In the present study, a bib-
liometric analysis has been performed on BES-related
Keywords: Bibliometric analysis, bioelectrochemical research from 1991 to 2014. Basic publication items, in-
systems, electricity generation, wastewater. cluding publication outputs, subject categories, journals,
countries and institutes were identified to describe the
BIOELECTROCHEMICAL systems (BES) are unique systems status of BES research. Moreover, word cluster analysis
that convert chemical energy into electricity or fuels/ was applied to evaluate the research trend during 1991
chemicals through the catalytic activities of microorgan- 2014. These results could provide a basis for better under-
isms or enzymes. Based on the biocatalysts and their standing of the development of the global BES research.
application mode, BES can be classified into enzymatic
fuel cell (EFC), microbial fuel cell (MFC), microbial Data sources and methods
electrolysis cell (MEC), microbial desalination cell
(MDC) and microbial solar cell (MSC). The historical Documents used in this study were obtained from the
origin of BES research can be dated back to 1911, when on-line version of SCI-Expanded (SCIE), Thomson
Potter1 first discovered that certain bacteria can transfer Reuters Web of Science database. In the 2014 edition of
electrons extracellularly while decomposing organic the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), 8618 journals with
compounds. However, no significant discovery was made citation references across 176 scientific disciplines have
in the next few decades. In 1980s, when the wide applica- been listed. Due to the absence of abstract and keywords
tion of electron transfer mediators had considerably im- in articles before 1991, only articles published in and
proved the power outputs, BES got more attention from after 1991 have been discussed in this study. Articles
researchers2. The mediators used in BES are mostly toxic, related to BES were queried based on the topic (bioelec-
expensive and easy to be washed away, which has heavily trochemical system*, or bio-electrochemical system*,
bioelectrochemical reactor* or bio-electrochemical re-
*For correspondence. (e-mail: wangqh59@sina.com) actor*, microbial fuel cell*, microbial desalination
2204 CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 109, NO. 12, 25 DECEMBER 2015
 REVIEW ARTICLE
cell*, microbial electrodialysis cell*, microbial electro- belonging to these top six categories cover 91.9% of the
chemical cell*, microbial thermoelectric cell*, microbial total articles published during the past 24 years. Figure 2
biofuel cell*, microbial photoelectrochemical cell*, shows the annual publication outputs of the top 6 subject
microbial electrolysis or enzymatic biofuel cell*, en- categories. It can be observed that since 2005, BES-
zymatic fuel cell*, microbial solar cell*, microbial related studies in these six subject categories have
electrochemical snorkel or microbial electrosynthesis). experienced a rapid increase. This indicates that BES is
Articles originating from England, Scotland, Wales and an emerging multidisciplinary research area.
Northern Ireland were reclassified as from the United The 3131 BES-related articles were published in 386
Kingdom (UK), and publications from Hong Kong were journals in the SCIE database. Table 1 lists the top 10
combined with those from mainland China. The reported most productive journals, with the respective IF, h-index
Impact Factor (IF) of each journal was obtained accord- and average number of citations per BES related article.
ing to JCR 2014. A total of 1421 articles on BES were published in the 10
Contributions of different institutes and countries were journals, accounting for 45.4% of the total articles pub-
estimated by the affiliation of at least one author of the lished during the past 24 years. Among them, Biore-
articles. Collaboration pattern was determined by the source Technology published the most articles (428),
addresses of the authors, where the term single coun- comprising 13.7% of the total, followed by Environ-
try/institute was assigned if all the authors addresses mental Science and Technology (5.9%), Journal of Power
were from the same country/institute and the term inter- Sources (5.6%), International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
national/inter-institutional collaboration was assigned if (5.3%) and Biosensors and Bioelectronics (4.4%).
the articles were co-authored by researchers from different
countries/institutes.
All articles related to research on BES during the past
24 years (19912014) were assessed from the following
aspects: publication outputs, subject categories and jour-
nals, countries and institutes. To obtain the research trend
information, word cluster analysis which combined the
words in title, author keywords and abstracts was applied.

Results and discussion

Publication output

Though the basic principle of BES was discovered about

100 years ago, it is only in recent years that the system
has attracted widespread interest and achieved remark-
able improvements. During 19912003, BES-related pub-
lications increased at a relatively low rate, from only one Figure 1. Cumulative number of articles by year from 1991 to 2014.
article published in 1991 to 15 articles in 2003, with a
total of 53 articles published in SCIE database (Figure 1).
Research on BES experienced tremendous growth over
the past 11 years (20042014). The number of publica-
tions increased to 680 in 2014, which was 45.3 times that
in 2003. A total of 3131 BES-related journal articles were
published during 19912014 in SCIE database, and these
articles were used for further analysis.

Distribution of subject categories and journals

According to the classification of subject categories in

the JCR, the 3131 articles are distributed in 50 subject
categories. The subject categories containing over 500
BES-related articles are biotechnology and applied
microbiology (1070), energy and fuels (955), chemistry
(845), electrochemistry (805), engineering (767), and Figure 2. Growth trends of BES-related articles of the top 6
environmental sciences and ecology (563). The articles categories.

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 109, NO. 12, 25 DECEMBER 2015 2205

REVIEW ARTICLE
Table 1. Top 10 most productive journals on BES research

Journal TP (%) IF h-index TC/TP

Bioresource Technology 428 (13.7) 4.494 38 15.6

Environmental Science and Technology 184 (5.9) 5.330 62 75.4
Journal of Power Sources 175 (5.6) 6.217 33 21.8
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 165 (5.3) 3.313 25 14.9
Biosensors and Bioelectronics 139 (4.4) 6.409 37 31.9
Electrochimica Acta 70 (2.2) 4.504 19 17.4
Electrochemistry Communications 68 (2.2) 4.847 28 38.8
Energy and Environmental Science 66 (2.1) 20.523 29 36.4
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 66 (2.1) 3.337 28 36.0
Water Research 60 (1.9) 5.528 27 46.9

TP, Total number of publications (the percentage of articles in total publications is given within brackets);
IF, Impact factor, based on JCR 2014; TC, Total number of citations.

Table 2. Top 15 most productive countries/territories in BES research

Country TP R (%) R (FP) R (RP) R (SP) R (CP)

China 924 1 (29.54) 1 (816) 1 (799) 1 (653) 2 (271)

USA 922 2 (29.48) 2 (743) 2 (749) 2 (609) 1 (313)
South Korea 267 3 (8.54) 3 (204) 3 (209) 3 (160) 3 (107)
India 176 4 (5.63) 4 (158) 4 (157) 4 (139) 12 (37)
UK 175 5 (5.59) 5 (133) 5 (127) 6 (92) 4 (83)
Japan 152 6 (4.86) 6 (124) 6 (125) 5 (111) 9 (41)
Germany 94 7 (3.01) 10 (64) 10 (65) 11 (44) 7 (50)
France 90 8 (2.88) 7 (76) 7 (76) 7 (61) 17 (29)
Australia 90 8 (2.88) 14 (50) 14 (49) 13 (35) 5 (55)
Canada 87 10 (2.78) 10 (64) 11 (64) 9 (53) 14 (34)
The Netherlands 84 11 (2.69) 8 (68) 9 (66) 8 (54) 16 (30)
Spain 83 12 (2.65) 12 (60) 12 (59) 10 (48) 13 (35)
Taiwan 83 12 (2.65) 8 (68) 8 (72) 11 (44) 10 (39)
Belgium 75 14 (2.40) 15 (42) 15 (48) 17 (22) 6 (53)
Singapore 71 15 (2.27) 13 (52) 13 (56) 16 (25) 8 (46)

R, Rank (the percentage of articles in total publications is given within brackets); FP, First author publi-
cations; RP, Reprint author publications; SP, Single-national publications; CP, International collaborative
articles.

According to Bradfords law of scattering20, the above- 22.5%) are internationally collaborative publications.
mentioned 5 journals, publishing about 34.8% of the total Table 2 lists the top 15 countries/territories ranked by the
articles, are the core journals in BES field. Energy and total publications. It is evident that China and USA are
Environmental Science, which has the highest IF (20.523) the largest contributors, publishing 924 and 922 articles
among the top 10 journals, has published 66 articles on respectively, which is far more than those of other coun-
BES. Environmental Science and Technology, with an IF tries. China started BES research rather late. The first ar-
of 5.330, has the highest h-index (62) and also the highest ticle published in SCIE database with a Chinese author
average citations per article (TC/TP, 75.4) in the BES appeared in 2006. However, the output of China in-
field. creased at a rather high rate and surpassed USA in 2012.
China ranks first in the number of total publications, first
author publications, reprint author publications and sin-
Publication distribution of countries and institutes gle-country publications, and second in international col-
laborative publications. Except for Germany, Australia,
The contributions of countries/territories to BES-related Belgium and Singapore, all the other 11 most productive
research output were evaluated by the location of the countries/territories have more single-country publica-
affiliations of at least one author of the articles. Among tions than collaborative publications, and India has the
the 3131 articles, 3 had no author address information. The highest percentage of independent articles (79%), fol-
remaining 3128 articles were published by 58 coun- lowed by Japan (73%).
tries/territories. Among the 3128 articles, 2424 (77.5%) The 2128 articles on BES were resubmitted by 1311
are single-country publications and the others (704, different institutes, among which 699 (53.3%) institutes

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Table 3. Top 15 most productive institutes in BES research

Institute TP R (%) R (FP) R (RP) R (SP) R (CP)

Penn State Univ., USA 222 1 (7.1) 1 (159) 1 (164) 1 (110) 2 (112)
Chinese Acad. Sci., China 158 2 (5.1) 3 (85) 3 (86) 2 (37) 1 (121)
Harbin Inst. Technol., China 135 3 (4.3) 2 (93) 2 (88) 5 (31) 3 (104)
Univ. Massachusetts, USA 61 4 (2.0) 4 (51) 5 (50) 3 (33) 20 (28)
Guangdong Inst. Ecoenvironm. and Soil Sci., China 60 5 (1.9) 6 (47) 6 (49) 22 (12) 5 (48)
Univ. Tokyo, Japan 59 6 (1.9) 14 (33) 20 (29) 65 (5) 4 (54)
Univ. Queensland, Australia 59 6 (1.9) 14 (33) 14 (33) 12 (17) 7 (42)
Wageningen Univ., The Netherlands 56 8 (1.8) 7 (45) 7 (43) 34 (9) 6 (47)
Univ. Sci. & Technol. China, China 56 8 (1.8) 4 (51) 4 (51) 7 (26) 17 (30)
Univ Ghent, Belgium 55 10 (1.8) 14 (33) 11 (36) 18 (15) 8 (40)
S. China Univ. Technol., China 53 11 (1.7) 8 (43) 7 (43) 8 (25) 20 (28)
Dalian Univ. Technol., China 52 12 (1.7) 10 (38) 12 (34) 14 (16) 10 (36)
Tsinghua Univ., China 51 13 (1.6) 9 (40) 9 (39) 14 (16) 11 (35)
Univ Wisconsin, USA 49 14 (1.6) 12 (35) 14 (33) 18 (15) 12 (34)
Arizona State Univ., USA 47 15 (1.5) 11 (37) 10 (37) 4 (32) 44 (15)

R, Rank (the percentage of articles in total publications is given within brackets); FP, First author publications; RP, Re-
print author publications; SP, Single-national publications; CP, International collaborative articles.

published only one article and 196 (15%) published two keywords used in the past 24 years on the BES field, the
articles. Table 3 provides a list of the top 15 most produc- synonymic single words and congeneric phrases were
tive institutes during 19912014. Pennsylvania State Uni- summed. For example, microbial fuel cell, microbial
versity ranks first in total publications, first author fuel cells, microbial fuel cell (MFC), microbial fuel
publications, reprint author publications and single- cells (MFCs), MFC and MFCs were all counted as
institutional publications and second in inter-institutional microbial fuel cell. Microbial fuel cell (1465) is the
publications, with a total of 222 articles, followed by the most frequently used author keyword, followed by
Chinese Academy of Science (158) and Harbin Institute microbial electrolysis cell (160), wastewater treatment
of Technology (35). A bias might appear because the (131), bioelectrochemical system (126), biofuel cell
Chinese Academy of Science has branches in many cities, (111), electricity generation (110), biocathode (98),
and a different ranking would be generated if articles are biofilm (97), power density (90) and bioelectricity
divided among the branches. It is noteworthy that 7 of the (76). Based on the results of author keywords analysis,
15 institutes are from China, which is in accord with the studies on BES can be separated into three categories:
rapid increase in publications from China. different types of BES reactors, applications and methods
Among the top 15 most productive institutes, only the to improve performance.
University of Massachusetts and Arizona State Univer- In order to analyse the historical development of BES
sity, both from USA, have more single-institutional research, a new method called word cluster analysis was
publications than collaborative publications. Inter- applied in this study. This method has been used to study
institutional collaboration is more common in other insti- the research trend on drinking water 22, proteomics23,
tutes, especially for University of Tokyo, 91.5% of whose nitrate removal18 and atmospheric simulation 24, and its
publications are collaborative articles, and only 5 single- procedure has been described in detail in the literature22.
institutional articles. The Wageningen University, the In the present study, article titles, author keywords and
Netherlands also prefers inter-institutional collaboration, abstracts were combined to form the word base.
with only 9 single-institutional articles out of 56 total According to the results of author keywords analysis,
publications. MFC and MEC are the two most frequently studied BES
reactors; other reactors, including EFC, MDC and MSC
are less studied. Figure 3 shows the annual outputs on
Hot topics different types of reactors. It is evident that the annual
publications on MFC, MEC and EFC show an increasing
The author keywords of an article can supply details of trend. MFC is the most frequently studied and also the
the article subjects and a statistical analysis of them can earliest studied BES reactors. In 1962, Davis and
offer the research trend information of a particular field. Yarbrough25 had reported on the preliminary experiments
Among the 3131 articles, 2428 with author keywords in- of MFC. The discovery of mediator-less MFC had given
formation were analysed. A total of 4479 keywords were a significant boost to MFC research, which could be illus-
listed by authors on the BES field, among which 3262 trated by the fact that the number of articles on MFC has
(72.8%) were used only once and 544 (12.1%) were used doubled from the year 2007 (66) to 2008 (137). The
twice. When analysing the frequency of the author construction materials and methods, substrates, current

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 109, NO. 12, 25 DECEMBER 2015 2207

REVIEW ARTICLE
progress and the challenges of MFC have been reviewed was studied using many kinds of wastewater, including
in detail10,11,13,15,26,27. MEC, which is also known as biocata- domestic wastewater3638, swine wastewater39,40, food
lyased electrolysis cell or bioelectrochemically assisted processing wastewater 41, brewery wastewater42, etc.
microbial reactor28,29, is a modified MFC, whose cathode Moreover, wastewater treatment can also be achieved in
is anearobic and thus a small external voltage is needed other BES reactors, such as MECs43,44 and MDC45.
for hydrogen evolution30. MEC was independently dis- As shown in Figure 4, the number of articles on deni-
covered by two different research teams just a few years trification and biosensors is much less than the other
ago28,29, and publications on MEC have increased in re- three applications and increases at a relatively slow rate.
cent years. MDC was first reported by Cao et al.31 in Complete cathodic denitrification to N2 gas with a chemi-
2009. The annual outputs on MDC have increased slowly cal anode was established in 1993. However, H2 gas
in the past few years, and remained stable (16 articles) produced from electrolysis of water was used as the in-
during 20122014. Though MDC can minimize power termediate reducing agent and a high-energy input was
consumption in the desalination process, there are still some required to electrolyze water. Gregory et al.46 found that
technical problems to be solved before practical applica- a pure culture of Geobacter metallireducens was able to
tion. It is reported that 200 ml of artificial wastewater reduce nitrate to nitrite with the electrode as the sole elec-
(acetic acid as carbon source) is needed to desalinate only tron donor. In this process, hydrogen formation was not
about 3 ml of salt water. Moreover, production of protons needed, but denitrification was not completed. It was in
at one electrode and consumption at the other make these 2007 that a MFC with both a bioanode and biocathode
chambers more acidic and alkaline32. As a result, further performing simultaneous organics removal, power pro-
studies are required for a better understanding of this duction and complete denitrification without relying on
technology and to improve its use in commercial applica- H2 -formation or external energy input was first estab-
tions. The principle and performance of MEC, EFC, MSC lished47. In recent years, BES for nitrate removal has
and MDC have also been reviewed in detail12,14,16,36. been utilized in wastewater treatment48 and ground water
BES is a new technology with great promise and varied in situ remediation49. MFC can be applied as a microbial
applications. Figure 4 shows the annual publications on biosensor for analysis of target chemicals, and continuous
different applications of BES. It is no surprise that elec- on-line process monitoring and control. Research on
tricity generation is the main application of BES, as the MFC as a biosensor started rather early. In 1977, Karube
fundamental purpose of BES is to recover electricity from et al. 50 developed a MFC-based biochemical oxygen
organic matter to obtain electrical energy or produce demand (BOD) biosensor with Clostridium butyricum
other fuels/chemicals. Using MFC to recover energy from immobilized on the electrode. Despite its early start,
wastewater was first presented in 1991 (ref. 34). In 2004, MFC-based biosensor developed slowly. There were only
Liu et al.35 found that MFC can produce electricity from 7 articles published on MFC-based biosensors during
domestic wastewater and accomplish biological waste- 19912002. After 2002, more articles were published in
water treatment simultaneously. This finding marked the this field, which might be due to the development of
establishment of a relationship between electricity genera- mediator-less MFC. MFC-based BOD biosensors have
tion and wastewater treatment. After that, simultaneous long-term stability, fine reproducibility and accuracy
electricity generation and wastewater treatment in MFCs compared with other types of BOD sensors, and have

Figure 3. Research trends of different types of BES reactors. Figure 4. Research trends of different BES applications.

2208 CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 109, NO. 12, 25 DECEMBER 2015

 REVIEW ARTICLE
been studied by many researchers51,52. MFC-based bio- on mediators in BES has remained stable during the past
sensors can also be used to analyse other parameters, 4 years. Mediators such as thionine, methyl viologen and
including lactate53, volatile fatty acids54 and toxic sub- humic acid facilitate electron transfer from microbial
stances55,56. cells to the electrode. As most of the mediators are
The threshold for feasible industrial applications of expensive and toxic, their application in commercialized
BES is considered to be 1 kW m3 (ref. 57). During the MFC is limited. Researchers are focusing on mediator-
past 24 years, many studies have concentrated on improv- less BES reactors66,67 to find safer and cheaper media-
ing the performance of BES to make them commercially tors68.
available. The effects of factors such as electrode materi-
als, reactor design and configuration and operation condi-
Conclusion
tions on the performance of BES have been described in
detail58,59. Figure 5 shows several factors that might
Based on 3131 BES-related publications from the SCIE
affect the cost and performance of BES reactors. BES re-
database, this bibliometric study provided an overview of
actors with air-cathode and biocathode can both reduce
research in BES technology and identified some signifi-
the installation and operation costs, and are increasingly
cant factors. The keyword analysis revealed that research
studied by researchers. The electrode materials have sig-
on BES can be separated into three aspects: different
nificant impact on BES performance, and many materials,
types of BES reactors, applications and methods to
including carbon cloth, carbon felt, fibre brush, and
improve BES performance. MFC is the most popular BES
graphite rod, have been used. In recent years, carbon
reactor, and utilization of BES for electricity generation
nanotubes (CNT) have exhibited great potential in appli-
and wastewater treatment is the most studied application.
cation in BES reactors, due to their high specific surface
BES-related publications have significantly increased
area and unique electrical and mechanical properties60.
during the past 24 years and are predicted to be growing
CNT can serve as electrode material or be used to modify
at a high rate in the future. Articles were published in 386
the anode material, which can attract more exoelectro-
journals in 50 subject categories. Bioresource Technology
gens, forming thicker biofilms61 and facilitate electron
published the most number of articles in this field, fol-
transfer from exoelectrogens to the anode by providing a
lowed by Environmental Science and Technology and
strong interaction between the microbial biofilms62. Gra-
Journal of Power Sources. China, with 7 institutes included
phene has attracted tremendous interest due to its desir-
in the top 15 productive institutes, is the biggest contribu-
able properties for electrochemical applications: high
tor to BES publications.
conductivity, large specific surface area, applicable elec-
trocatalytic activities and low production costs63,64. Liu et
al.65 were the first to use graphene for BES. In 2010, they 1. Potter, M. C., Electrical effects accompanying the decomposition
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