CuO/Al2O3 sorbent-catalyst has been studied extensively for SO2 removal from flue gases of stationary sources. In these studies the SO2-adsorbed CuO/Al2O3 is treated by reducing reagents such as H-2 to yield concentrated SO2, which is further converted in a separate catalytic reactor to valuable products, such as elemental sulfur. This work reports a novel technique, which combines the SO2 removal, H-2 regeneration of the sorbent-catalyst, and elemental sulfur recovery into one reactor using a CuO/Al2O3 sorbent-catalyst simply by recycling the effluent gases back to the reactor during H-2 regeneration. This combined process can be operated isothermally at 400 degrees C with 83% yield to elemental sulfur. The catalyst for the elemental sulfur formation is likely to be CuS formed in the H-2 regeneration. Most of the Cu species regenerated from the H-2 regeneration is Cu-0, which converts to CuO and CuSO4 during the SO2 removal stage.