Recent advances in microbial capture of hydrogen sulfide from sour gas via sulfur-oxidizing bacteria

Zheng Chen; Gama Yang; Xuemi Hao; Nadia A Samak; Yunpu Jia; Sumit Peh; Tingzhen Mu; Maohua Yang; Jianmin Xing

doi:10.1002/elsc.202100006

Recent advances in microbial capture of hydrogen sulfide from sour gas via sulfur-oxidizing bacteria

Eng Life Sci. 2021 Jun 3;21(10):693-708. doi: 10.1002/elsc.202100006. eCollection 2021 Oct.

Authors

Zheng Chen^{1

2}, Gama Yang^{1

2}, Xuemi Hao^{1

2}, Nadia A Samak^{1

2

3}, Yunpu Jia^{1

2}, Sumit Peh^{1

2}, Tingzhen Mu¹, Maohua Yang¹, Jianmin Xing^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing P. R. China.
² College of Chemical Engineering University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing P. R. China.
³ Processes Design and Development Department Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute Cairo Egypt.

Abstract

Biological desulfurization offers several remarkably environmental advantages of operation at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure, no demand of toxic chemicals as well as the formation of biologically re-usable sulfur (S⁰), which has attracted increasing attention compared to conventionally physicochemical approaches in removing hydrogen sulfide from sour gas. However, the low biomass of SOB, the acidification of process solution, the recovery of SOB, and the selectivity of bio-S⁰ limit its industrial application. Therefore, more efforts should be made in the improvement of the BDS process for its industrial application via different research perspectives. This review summarized the recent research advances in the microbial capture of hydrogen sulfide from sour gas based on strain modification, absorption enhancement, and bioreactor modification. Several efficient solutions to limitations for the BDS process were proposed, which paved the way for the future development of BDS industrialization.

Keywords: absorption enhancement; bioreactor modification; hydrogen sulfide; metabolic engineering; microbial capture; sulfur‐oxidizing bacteria.

Publication types

Review