Journal of Sustainable Energy (Jun 2023)
APPLICATION OF NANOFLUIDS IN SOLAR ENERGY RESEARCH: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF TRENDS FROM 2007 TO 2021 AND FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Abstract
The advent of nanotechnology has spurred the development and utilization of nanomaterials and nanofluids in solar energy research. This paper presents for the first time a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications on nanofluid application to solar energy research. Data sourced from the Scopus® database covering 15 years were employed in this study. Network analyses of the participating organizations and countries, citations of documents and sources, and co-occurrence of author keywords were performed using VOS viewer® software. The result showed that 1630 articles consisting majorly of journals (76.4%) were published with the year 2021 recording 23.48% of the total publications. Engineering (922 articles) emerged as the subject of study with the most published articles. The results revealed that China and the University of Malaya with the highest number of publications were the most productive country and organization, respectively. The work of Ghasemi H. published in 2014 was the leading paper with 1049 citations while “Solar Energy” was the leading journal with 5456 citations. The most used keyword was “Nanofluid”. Research hotspots focused on the optical and thermal properties of different nanofluids and their application in solar energy devices. Development of green and novel nanoparticles and base fluids, deployment of thermal enhancement techniques, and increased studies on hybrid nanofluids and solar still are future research undertakings. The compendium of findings herein is expected to benefit the solar energy research community and serve as the catalyst for future studies in this regard.