Theoretical production of metabolites for microbial enhanced oil recovery in reservoirs

Key words:  reservoirs  microbial enhanced oil recovery  surfactant  polymer  recovery efficiency  metabolites

Abstract:

In order to study the capability of the microbial metabolites enhancing the oil recovery, the mathematical relations between the contents of the metabolites and the contents of the available substances were established under the conservation of matters and the characterization of reservoir pore structure. The ability of the microorganisms metabolizing the positive displacement materials was analyzed according to the mechanisms of the microbial enhanced oil recovery and the chemical composition of the metabolites. The analysis indicates that there are more oxygen atoms in the metabolites enhancing the oil recovery. However, the oxygen atom contents in the reservoir fluid are not enough to produce the beneficial flooding materials, which restricts the generation of some materials containing the oxygen atoms, such as the bio-surfactant, the biopolymer, the biogas. The results show that the oil recovery can not be improved considerably by the microbial enhanced oil recovery using petroleum hydrocarbon as the sole carbon source. The metabolites production and scopes are restricted by the substances solubility, the depletion rate, and the injection rate, etc.