Various Types of Microorganisms Applied in Liquid Fuel Biodesulfurization

According to environmental regulations, it is a must to efficiently desulfurize the fuels (including liquid fuels) in order to decrease the air pollution. As some sulfur containing components are resistant to existing typical desulfurization methods (such as HDS), researches has focused on applying microorganisms to increase the sulfur removal efficiency. The very first step of biodesulfurization is to find and apply the proper microorganism. These microorganisms (including thermophiles and mesophiles) are mostly bacteria and a limited number of yeasts have also been introduced. Most of these bacteria are gram-positive and a few gram-negatives have been known to be able to desulfurize. Some microorganisms are only able to desulfurize a specific component while some others have the ability to desulfurize more than one component. This paper gives brief information about the biodesulfurization microorganisms and the sulfur removal pathway they use and also the method we applied to isolate a heavy crude oil biodesulfurization bacteria. This project is kindly initiated by "Petroleum Engineering & Development Company (PEDEC)" which is a subsidery of "National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)".

Keywords:

Biodesulfurization , Liquid Fuel , Microorganism , Mesophile , Thermophile