Study of Effective Parameters on Growth and Activity of Thiobacillus Ferrooxidans in Solvent Recovey Used in Sweetening Process

The physiochemical techniques presently available for treatment of H2S containing gases are many and various. The gas processing industry is seeking novel, cost effective, environmentally compatible and operator friendly technologies applicable to the small volume producers. So in near future, smaller gas reservoirs with high concentration of H2S will be explored. The widespread research for finding more economical methods has led to investigate microbiological processes. The biological process which has been studied in this article is Bio-SR process. The Bio-SR process uses Thiobacillus ferrooxidans bacteria to recover solution used in sweetening sour gas. In this study, an indigenous Thiobacillus ferrooxidans has been isolated from Sarcheshme copper mine and the effects of process variables on the growth and activity of this bacteria were investigated in shake flask. Then some experiments have also been done, using bubble column and fixed bed bioreactor. The results showed that the isolated bacteria has very high ability for oxidation of Iron (II) and recovering of solution that used in sweetening sour gas. In this study, maximum rate of biological oxidation were 1.2 and 0.9 gr/lit.hr in Erlenmeyer Hask and bubble column bioreactor respectively which were two and three times more than previous study.