DOI: https://doi.org/10.55373/mjchem.v28i3.1

Keywords: Waste paper, paper waste, Carbon-based materials, systematic review, bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Every year, a large amount of waste paper is discarded which causes environmental pollution. Therefore, how to convert this waste paper into a useful products using low-cost and effective techniques has become a challenging work if there are no comprehensive or systematic studies available on research trends especially to observe changes in research development over the year. The present systematic review aims to examine research trend from 2001 to April 2026 on the conversion of waste paper into functional carbon materials for various applications. The conversion of waste paper into high-value carbon materials has increased significant attention in recent year particularly in carbon dioxide capture and utilisation as well as energy storage applications. Data was generated by searching for the proper keywords in Scopus database. Then the resulting data were then filtered according to the PRISMA guidelines. About 116 documents were used to study research trends using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix RStudio. The results showed that the most frequently used keywords were waste paper, activated carbon, carbon, adsorption, aerogel and graphene. The highest number of publications in this field is from China. Based on Bibliometric analysis using RStudio, data generated from Sopus can be used to observe the relationship between keyword, authors publication, countries and publication sources. The results can clearly identify the most important topics, current applications in use, potential research collaborations and topics or areas that have not been clearly explored.