Microbial enhanced oil recovery

This was a technology transfer UK industry-government sponsored project, aiming at developing and implementing a new technology to monitor water-injection chemistries to increase oil recovery through down-borehole bacterial activity. This technology would facilitate the flow of oil in deep underground reservoirs at high pressures -extreme environments. We studied the anaerobic aquatic chemistry of geological systems and its link to microbial activity (ecophysiology). This project delivered a simpler, faster, cleaner, cheaper and more transportable/transferable solvent extraction method; a robust solvent extraction GC/FID method to fingerprint hydrocarbons in samples collected from partner’s bioreactors; a new method for collecting a suitable aqueous sample to be used in molecular fingerprinting and biomarker discovery MEOR studies; a precise and accurate GC/Mass Spectrometry study of partner’s bioreactors.