Enhanced Biodesulfurization with a Microbubble Strategy in an Airlift Bioreactor with Haloalkaliphilic Bacterium Thioalkalivibrio versutus D306

Sumit Peh; Tingzhen Mu; Wei Zhong; Maohua Yang; Zheng Chen; Gama Yang; Xuhao Zhao; Moustafa Mohamed Sharshar; Nadia A Samak; Jianmin Xing

doi:10.1021/acsomega.2c00258

Enhanced Biodesulfurization with a Microbubble Strategy in an Airlift Bioreactor with Haloalkaliphilic Bacterium Thioalkalivibrio versutus D306

ACS Omega. 2022 Apr 29;7(18):15518-15528. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c00258. eCollection 2022 May 10.

Authors

Sumit Peh^{1

2}, Tingzhen Mu¹, Wei Zhong^{1

2}, Maohua Yang¹, Zheng Chen^{1

2}, Gama Yang^{1

2}, Xuhao Zhao^{1

2}, Moustafa Mohamed Sharshar^{1

2}, Nadia A Samak^{1

2

3}, Jianmin Xing^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100190, China.
² College of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P.R. China.
³ Processes Design and Development Department, Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, Nasr City 11727, Cairo, Egypt.
⁴ Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Shantou 515031, P.R. China.

Abstract

Biodesulfurization under haloalkaline conditions requires limiting oxygen and additional energy in the system to deliver high mixing quality control. This study considers biodesulfurization in an airlift bioreactor with uniform microbubbles generated by a fluidic oscillation aeration system to enhance the biological desulfurization process and its hydrodynamics. Fluidic oscillation aeration in an airlift bioreactor requires minimal energy input for microbubble generation. This aeration system produced 81.87% smaller average microbubble size than the direct aeration system in a bubble column bioreactor. The biodesulfurization phase achieved a yield of 94.94% biological sulfur, 84.91% biological sulfur selectivity, and 5.06% sulfur oxidation performance in the airlift bioreactor with the microbubble strategy. The biodesulfurization conditions of thiosulfate via Thioalkalivibrio versutus D306 are revealed in this study. The biodesulfurization conditions in the airlift bioreactor with the fluidic oscillation aeration system resulted in the complete conversion of thiosulfate with 27.64% less sulfate production and 10.34% more biological sulfur production than in the bubble column bioreactor. Therefore, pleasant hydrodynamics via an airlift bioreactor mechanism with microbubbles is favored for biodesulfurization under haloalkaline conditions.