Electron shuttling by sulfide oxidizing bacteria as a novel strategy to continuously recover electricity from sulfide oxidation

We studied a continuous bioelectrochemical process for sulfide oxidation under haloalkaliphilic conditions. Recently, it was demonstrated that sulfide oxidizing bacteria (SOB) can remove sulfide from solution in the absence of oxygen and use an electrode as final electron acceptor. This principle was applied in a continuous process where sulfide was fed to SOB in an anolyte recirculation reactor which was circulated over the anode compartment of a bioelectrochemical system. The biological growth on the anode and of the planktonic growth was studied.