Abstract:
This work studied the effects of aeration on bacterial pyrite removal fromcoal in slurry bubble column bioreactors and verified the hypothesis whether thevolumetric mass transfer coefficient (k,a) was the main factor affecting pyriteremoval in bioreactor or not. In the first part, we designed four types of airspargers : 1 single nozzle and 3 perforated plates which provided different k,a andused them in the control experiments. The results showed that the perforated platewith concentric circle-hole arrangement (CC) yielded the highest kLa. The kLa andthe intensity of mixing were increased with increasing superficial gas velocity.In the second part, we studied the influences of air spargers in biologicalexperiments using the chemoautotroph F6 (Thiobacillus ferrooxidans-like-bacteria).Pyrite removal rate employing perforated plate was higher than that of singlenozzle while there was almost no difference among the three types of perforatedplates. These results could not verify the hypothesis. Hence, the effects of thesuperficial gas velocity which directly related to intensity of mixing on pyriteremoval rate were investigated. The results illustrated that the lower the superficialgas velocity introduced, the higher the pyrite removal rate achieved. Though thevolumetric mass transfer coefficient, k,a was as lowest as 0.006 s-l, the highestyield was attainable at the lowest superficial gas velocity at 0.61 cm/s. The resultsindicated that there was no oxygen limitation in bacterial pyrite removal in bulbblecolumn. In the liquid solution experiments, where ferrous ion was used as energysource to eliminate the cell adsorption aspect, superficial gas velocity almost hadno effect on the cell activity. These results suggested that the increase of superficialgas velocity affected the cell attachment on the solid. At high superficial gasvelocity, cell adsorption on pyrite surface would be hindered by the severe flowand collision of coal particles caused by the high shear rate and intensity ofmixing. Therfore, we verified that the hypothesis was incorrect in this case andalso concluded that the major factors of the bacterial pyrite removal in biorea.ctorwere shear and the intensity of mixing.