The Role of Microbial Products in Green Enhanced Oil Recovery: Acetone and Butanone

Abstract

Green enhanced oil recovery is an oil recovery process involving the injection of specific environmentally friendly fluids (liquid chemicals and gases) that effectively displace oil due to their ability to alter the properties of enhanced oil recovery. In the microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) process, microbes produce products such as surfactants, polymers, ketones, alcohols, and gases. These products reduce interfacial tension and capillary force, increase viscosity and mobility, alter wettability, and boost oil production. The influence of ketones in green surfactant-polymer (SP) formulations is not yet well understood and requires further analysis. The work aims to examine acetone and butanone’s effectiveness in green SP formulations used in a sandstone reservoir. The manuscript consists of both laboratory experiments and simulations. The two microbial ketones examined in this work are acetone and butanone. A spinning drop tensiometer was utilized to determine the interfacial tension (IFT) values for the selected formulations. Viscosity and shear rate across a wide range of temperatures were measured via a Discovery hybrid rheometer. Two core flood experiments were then conducted using sandstone cores at reservoir temperature and pressure. The two formulations selected were an acetone and SP blend and a butanone and SP mixture. These were chosen based on their IFT reduction and viscosity enhancement capabilities for core flooding, both important in assessing a sandstone core’s oil recovery potential. In the first formulation, acetone was mixed with alkyl polyglucoside (APG), a non-ionic green surfactant, and the biopolymer Xanthan gum (XG). This formulation produced 32% tertiary oil in the sandstone core. In addition, the acetone and SP formulation was effective at recovering residual oil from the core. In the second formulation, butanone was blended with APG and XG; the formulation recovered about 25% residual oil from the sandstone core. A modified Eclipse simulator was utilized to simulate the acetone and SP core-flood experiment and examine the effects of surfactant adsorption on oil recovery. The simulated oil recovery curve matched well with the laboratory values. In the sensitivity analysis, it was found that oil recovery decreased as the adsorption values increased.

Green Enhanced Oil Recovery for Carbonate Reservoirs

“…Other processes [ 1 ] include microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR). MEOR [ 3 ] is an environmentally friendly enhanced oil recovery method that involves injecting microorganisms and produces surfactant, polymer, alcohol, ketone, acids, and gas in situ and enhances oil recovery. According to Haq [ 3 , 4 ], the green enhanced oil recovery (GEOR) is an eco-friendly EOR technique that involves the injection of specific green fluids, for example, surfactants, polymers, alcohols, acids, ketones, and gas (N 2 , CO 2 ) that effectively improves macroscopic and microscopic sweep efficiencies as a result increases residual oil recovery.…”

“…MEOR [ 3 ] is an environmentally friendly enhanced oil recovery method that involves injecting microorganisms and produces surfactant, polymer, alcohol, ketone, acids, and gas in situ and enhances oil recovery. According to Haq [ 3 , 4 ], the green enhanced oil recovery (GEOR) is an eco-friendly EOR technique that involves the injection of specific green fluids, for example, surfactants, polymers, alcohols, acids, ketones, and gas (N 2 , CO 2 ) that effectively improves macroscopic and microscopic sweep efficiencies as a result increases residual oil recovery. Classification of GEOR, surfactant, and polymer flooding mechanisms and challenges in carbonates, a summary of literature review, knowledge gaps, the objective of the work, and an outline of the research are discussed in the following sections.…”

“…GEOR processes [ 3 ] can be grouped into two categories: in situ and ex situ. Regarding in situ methods, bacteria with nutrients are injected into a reservoir, producing by-products such as surfactants, polymers, alcohols, ketones, acids, and gases (i.e., CO 2 and CH 4 ).…”

Exploiting Microbes in the Petroleum Field: Analyzing the Credibility of Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR)

“…A variety of microbes produces six chief metabolites (biosurfactants, biopolymers, biogas, biomass, bioacids, and biosolvents) that perform a dynamic role in the oil recovery process. These mechanisms include the reduction of oil viscosity, wettability modification, microbial plugging, reducing IFT, long hydrocarbon chain breakdown, and release of acids [14,17], as shown in Table 1. Azarhava et al [61] reported that when Bacillus licheniformis LMG 7559 was injected into the oil-saturated heterogeneous porous medium, it secreted extracellular Poly gamma-(glutamic acid), which enabled oil recovery of up to 31.45% using biopolymer flooding.…”

“…However, for this purpose, highly advanced technologies will be quickly exhaust between a fraction of a quarter and half of a well's oil reserve. This high level of extraction is addressed with the aid of a tertiary technique, Enhanced Oil Recovery, or EOR (Figure 1) [17].…”