Overall, some areas are contaminated with selenium, others suffer from a deficiency of selenium. It has been inferred that deficiency‐related problems are common in arsenic (As)‐polluted sites like West Bengal (Das et al. 1995; Roychowdhury et al. 2003; Spallholz et al. 2004). In Western India, elevated soil selenium levels can be seen in Jaipur and Alwar, Rajasthan and selenium enrichment in brassica plants sown there has been shown (Yadav et al. 2005). In Maharashtra, up to 3 mg/kg and more than 1100 mg/l Se has been reported in soil and water, respectively, around Thane creek, Mumbai (Ghosh et al. 2008). In Central India, Jharkhand shows elevated levels of Se as it is a coal‐fired region (Finkelman and Stracher 2011) and Bihar shows elevated levels because of industrial effluents and emissions from the Barauni industrial area (Sharma and Kumar 2006). Lowlands and ponds have been contaminated with a high level (>10 mg/l) of Se due to disposal of untreated industrial wastes degrading the quality of underlying groundwater around Chennai City, Tami Nadu' (Kumar and Riyazuddin 2011). In Northern and North‐western India, Se content shows high variability. In Uttar Pradesh, in the Western part of Muzaffarnagar, there is a high selenium content in ground water, and different parts of Haryana show Se content ranging from 1 to 10.5 mg/kg (Singh and Kumar 1976). In Haryana, surface soils are mostly enriched with selenium other than areas receiving high rainfall like Ambala, Kurukshetra, Rohtak, and Sonipat.
1.1.2 Mapping Selenium Research Dynamics Advances
Keeping in view the main objective of the chapter – to identify, evaluate, and interpret the work of researchers, scholars, and practitioners for developing insights into the technologies used for the removal of selenium from water – the following methodologies have been implemented:
1 To begin with, some free searches were done on Google Scholar to find “remediation, treatment technologies for selenium‐contaminated waters,” and by studying suitable references, a string was developed. The Web of Science database was used for extraction of data. The string applied was “selenium” with further search in “treatment OR remediation OR contamination OR removal” AND “Water.” The number of publications which appeared was 3840, which were analyzed. Extraction of data based on countries revealed that the USA leads in publishing papers in this domain, followed by China and Canada, India and Japan.
2 The authors selected papers with significant influence on technologies for selenium removal in the form of published articles, research papers, white papers and review reports on the said domain. The literature comprises material, notions, data, and evidence inscribed from a precise perspective to accomplish confident objectives or express convinced interpretations on the landscape of the technologies to be developed and the way they are to be investigated. The authors further wish to evaluate effectively this literature in the context of the research being proposed.
3 Thereafter, authors began by mapping a number of key strategies for selenium removal from waste and drinking waters. This research suggests mapping of the concepts, opinions, and thoughts from a volume of quality literature. The authors followed a reputable technique for expressing facts and intelligent processes. The mapping presented in this chapter is a description as a “visual outline,” a “pictorial depiction,” and a “topographical allegory” of the research in the domain of water purification. Mapping in this research presents a “perceptible indication” of a researcher's thoughts and clarification of the research domain which can be delivered to both policy makers and scientists.
The present study evaluates the performance of selenium treatment technologies based on several parameters such as, country, city of publication, and Web of Science Core Collection Times Cited Count (which measures the technological impact of literature). The most influential literature is studied for the Multidisciplinary Sciences research. The authorship outline, cooperative catalogue, joint factor, adapted collaborative quantity and research profile. The study also examines international publications output and impact in terms of citations per paper and usage counts in various journals.
This study analyzes the evolution outline of literature related to selenium removal in water and soil in India during 1987–2020 (33 years). The Web of Science is a multidisciplinary international bibliographic archive. The Web of Science international multidisciplinary bibliographical database was used in order to classify the publications reported internationally on the basis of specific scientific field.
1.1.3 Bibliometric Analysis
The Web of Science (WoS) international multidisciplinary bibliographical database used to identify the contributions published worldwide in the field of various technological domains suggested the contribution of various fields of science, as shown in Figure 1.1.
As is evident from Figure 1.1, the research is dominated by the Environmental Sciences, Metrology and Atmospheric Sciences, and the Water Resources domain collectively, which makes up 20% of the total research. This one fifth share of the contribution is followed by Chemistry/Multidisciplinary with 10%, Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology with 10%, and Soil Science with another share of 10% contribution. Adding on these three chunks of domains forms 50% of the total contribution, which is further strengthened by research from: Medicine/Immunology/Pathology; Biochemistry and Molecular Biology/Plant Sciences; Nanoscience and Nanotechnology/Material Science; Ecology/Marine and Fresh Water Biology; Geochemistry and Geophysics; and Agronomy and Plant Sciences.
Figure 1.1 Emerging research field for selenium removal technologies published worldwide.
Figure 1.2 Selenium research publication trends.
The most influential research that spans over the domains is from Chemistry, Multidisciplinary Sciences, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and Material Science. Salt et al. (1995), Matoba et al. (2002), Grätzel (2009), and Elmolla and Chaudhuri (2010) have made significant contributions with the following components:
judiciously
