Research Organization: Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering

It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise -- Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosopher, 1889 - 1951)

One of the great things about Alerts is that they remind me that researchers by the hundreds or even thousands are working tirelessly to solve the problems caused by the thousands of researchers who came before them.

For researchers in the desulfurization arena, this item may be useful …

In situ magnetic separation and immobilization of dibenzothiophene-desulfurizing bacteria
Yu-Guang Li, Hong-Shuai Gao, Wang-Liang Li, Jian-Min Xing, Hui-Zhou Liu
Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, National Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 353, Beijing 100190, PR China

From the article’s introduction we read …

Environmental regulations on sulfur contents have prompted research on high-level desulfurization for near-zero sulfur (<1 ppm) ultra-clean fuels ( Song, 2003 ). To meet lower sulfur requirements, refiners need to operate their conventional hydrodesulfurization (HDS) unit at more severe conditions than usual, such as higher temperature, higher pressure and longer residence time (Soleimani et al., 2007), and some aromatic sulfur-containing compounds such as alkylated dibenzothiophenes (Cx -DBTs) are resistant to HDS treatment. Therefore, new design approaches, such as biodesulfurization (BDS) ( Kilbane, 2006), adsorption desulfurization (Yang et al., 2003) and oxidation extraction desulfurization (Yu et al., 2005) were proposed for efficient production of ultra low sulfur fuels.

Our previously work had sought to improve the desulfurization performance by assembling γ-Al2O3 NPs to the surface of Pseudomonas delafieldii R-8 cells to facilitate adsorption of DBT ( Shan et al., 2005a,b). From the point of commercial application, the Rhodococcus strains possess several properties favorable for desulfurization over Pseudomonas in an oil–water system. First, the hydrophobic nature of Rhodococcus makes them access preferentially Cx-DBTs from the oil, resulting in little mass-transfer limitation (Le Borgne and Quintero, 2003; Monticello, 2000 ). Moreover, the Rhodococcus bacteria are more resistant to solvents than Pseudomonas (Bouchez-Naitali et al., 2004 ). Therefore, we attempted to develop a simple and effective technique by integrating the advantages of magnetic separation and cell immobilization for BDS process with Rhodococcus . To our knowledge, in situ magnetic separation and immobilization of bacteria for BDS has never been reported. In the present work, Fe3O4 NPs were modified with ammonium oleate to produce hydrophilic magnetic fluids. Oleate-modified NPs successfully recovered the target from the culture medium of Rhodococcus erythropolis LSSE8-1. The one-step magnetically immobilized cells exhibited good catalytic activity and repeated-batch desulfurization operational stability.
Source: http://www.nanoarchive.org/7197/

Following up, I visited the Web site of the Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, which described the group’s mission as follows …

Focusing on the key scientific and technological problems in green utilization of resources including natural and secondary resources and applying the theories and methods of environmentally benign green process engineering, the laboratory aims to investigate and develop new theories, new processes, originally innovative technologies, and industrialized technical integration with high efficiency and clean attributes for upgrading process in environmental and ecological industry systems and materials industries. By establishing demonstration pilot plants and transferring specific and integrated clean production technologies, the laboratory is devoted to boost circular economy of process industries in Chi
source: http://english.ipe.cas.cn/rh/rd/200906/t20090629_9235.html

Might be worth bookmarking this site for future reference.