A six week experiment under indoor simulated condition was carried out to investigate the external sulfate transformation between the sediments and overlying water from Lake Nanhu in Wuhan, China, and the influence of sulfate on the phosphorus components was also studied. The results showed that the sulfate input increased the pH and lowered the Eh in the overlying water. The sulfate concentration in the overlying water decreased with time, and it was assumed that there existed an obvious transformation of sulfate to other forms of sulfur compounds according to the variation of sulfate concentration in the pore water. The sulfate reduction index increased with higher input content of sulfate. The amount of sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) in the sediments achieved the peak value in the second week, and the SRB amounts of S500 and S1000 were much higher than that of the control. 31P-NMR was used to characterize the relative quantity of phosphorus compounds in the sediment extracts leached by NaOH-EDTA. The components of phosphorus in Nanhu Lake sediment were mainly orthophosphate, phosphate monoester, phosphodiester and pyrophosphate. The predominant one was orthophosphate (84.10%-95.54% of total phosphorus). The contents of other phosphorus components were followed: phosphate monoester > phosphodiester > pyrophosphate, and they increased due to the input of sulfate during the first four weeks, and decreased in the last two weeks. The external sulfate accelerated the release of orthophosphate from sediments to overlying water in a whole, and increased the contents of phosphate monoester, phosphodiester and pyrophosphate in sediments when the amounts of sulfate reducing bacteria were high.