Improvement of Biodesulfurization Rate by Assembling Nano-sorbents on the Surfaces of Microbial Cells

¹ Institute of process engineering, the Chinese academy of sciences
² Institute of Process Engineering

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: gbshan2003{at}hotmail.com.

Submitted on September 3, 2005
Revised on September 21, 2005
Accepted on 12 October 2005

	Abstract

To improve biodesulfurization rate is a key to industrialize biodesulfurization technology. The biodesulfurization rate is partially affected by transfer rate of substrates from organic phase to microbial cell. In the present study, -Al₂O₃ nano-sorbent, which had the ability to selectively adsorb dibenzothiophene (DBT) from organic phase, were assembled on the surfaces of Pseudomonas delafieldii R-8 cell, a desulfurization strain. -Al₂O₃ nano-sorbents have the ability to adsorb DBT from oil phase, and the rate of adsorption was far higher than that of biodesulfurization. Thus, DBT can be quickly transferred to the biocatalyst surface where nano-sorbents were located, which quickened DBT transfer from organic phase to biocatalyst surface and resulted in the increase of biodesulfurization rate. The desulfurization rate of the cells assembled with nano-sorbents was about 2-fold higher than that of original cells. The cells assembled with nano-sorbents were observed by a transmission electron microscope (TEM).

Key Words: 2-hydroxy-biphenyl, Dibenzothiophene, Nano-sorbent, Pseudomonas delafieldii, Y-Al2O3, mass transfer