In view of the high cost of industrial desulfurization, the difficulty of regeneration of desulfurizer and the difficulty of utilization of desulfurization products, the use of activated carbon fiber with superior adsorption and regeneration performance as a desulfurizer is very promising. The whole desulfurization process of activated carbon fiber adsorption-oxidation-hydration was first described, and the effect of surface functional groups on the catalytic efficiency of ACF adsorption was analyzed. It is concluded that before the process of adsorption and oxidation, the modification of ACF based on surface basic oxygen-containing functional groups and nitrogen- containing functional groups can significantly improve its desulfurization performance. After hydration to generate sulfuric acid, the ACF can be regenerated to elute or decompose the pollutants in the pores, restore the active sites, and achieve cyclic desulfurization. Then the modification and regeneration methods of activated carbon fiber are summarized: the modification method is mainly based on the adjustment of the physical structure and the type, quantity of surface functional groups of ACF. The bottleneck is that it is difficult to separate the coupling effects of pores and functional groups; the regeneration method mainly depends on external energy supply to make adsorption molecules and products desorbed or decomposed directly, but the carbon loss is large, the energy consumption is high, and the product utilization rate is low. In the end, suggestions are made for the future research direction of desulfurization activated carbon fiber modification and regeneration technology for reference in preparing high- performance desulfurizers.