Assessing the bacterial consortium's potential to bio-mitigate CO2 and SO2 from simulated flue gas, wastewater bioremediation, and product characterization

Abstract

The present study aims to fix carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) simultaneously by conducting extensive semi-continuous experiments on the 3 L glass bioreactor to evaluate the potential of bacterial consortium for CO2 (C), SO2 (S), and CO2 + SO2 (CS) gaseous mixture. In this study, the bacterial consortium (Bacillus tropicus SSLMC1, Bacillus cereus SSLMC2) utilizes thiosulfate as an energy source and domestic wastewater (DWW) supplemented with additional minerals as a nutrient source. The maximum CO2 and SO2 mitigation efficiency was obtained as 93.8 % and 91.4 % for CS and S gaseous mixtures, respectively. The biomass concentration, biomass productivity, removal efficiency, and utilization efficiency for the CS gas mixture are comparable with the C and S gas mixture. Simultaneously, various nutrients and pollutants such as BOD, COD, PO43- and CO32- were removed. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and Gas Chromatography-Mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) analysis of cell lysate and cell-free supernatant have indicated the presence of fatty alcohols and long-chain hydrocarbons in all three gaseous mixtures. The present study showed that bacterial consortia can bio-mitigate CO2 and SO2 simultaneously and implement the bio-mitigation study of CO2 and SO2 in a real scenario