Organic Sulfur Reduction on Lignite Coal Using Multistage Artificial Biotreatment (A-Bmt)

This study focuses on the biodesulfurization of lignite specifically the reduction of organic sulfur, namely aliphatic mercaptans/thiols via bioprocess methods. The process was conducted by using multistage artificial biotreatment (A-Bmt) and Pseudoclavibacter sp. SKC/XLW-1 strains as biocatalysts. The aims are to improve the recovery of clean coal by reducing the organic sulfur both in nodules and globular forms on the maceral surface during the stage of coal biooxidation prior to column bioflotation stage, in which it is still possible to achieve higher recovery of fine coal grains without sulphide mineral. The results shows that the A-Bmt method carried out through biooxidation stage followed by column bioflotation stage has better performance compared to the method without biooxidation stage. The results of this study show that the content of organic sulfur are lower by 25%.