creator Tian, Fangzhou advisor Stark, Benjamin C. Desulfurization is an important step in crude oil processing and is commonly achieved through a chemical process known as hydrodesulfurization (HDS). Because this process is expensive and produces H2S as a by-product, the alternative of biodesulfurization (BDS) has been investigated for many years. The most potentially useful biodesulfurization process is the 4S pathway, which is found in a number of bacterial species, including Mycobacterium Strain U, which was isolated in our lab. To reach the requirement of BDS for use in an actual industrial-scale process, U has to survive at temperatures approaching 60 OC. In work in our lab, natural selection methods have been introduced for improving the U strain. During this natural selection, four contaminant strains, identified by 16S rDNA sequencing as Bacillus sp., were isolated from extraordinary U cultures which have BDS activity at 54 OC. Meanwhile the BDS activity of U on its own was found to have an upper temperature limitation of 53 OC. Additional experiments proved that all four Bacillus strains interact with U and improve its BDS ability. Submitted by Erma Thomas (thomase@iit.edu) on 2016-07-15T17:10:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 etdadmin_upload_421909.zip: 677940 bytes, checksum: fb123e3c55f77c70557afdcf83d12a15 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-15T17:10:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 etdadmin_upload_421909.zip: 677940 bytes, checksum: fb123e3c55f77c70557afdcf83d12a15 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05 M.S. in Biology, May 2016 2016 2016-05 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3848 en Bacillus sp. Biodesulfurization DBT Mycobacterium Thesis born digital application/pdf In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access BIOL / Biology Illinois Institute of Technology Affiliated department