TY - JOUR AU - Abdullah Al-Sayegh, AU - Yahya Al-Wahaibi, AU - Saif Al-Bahry, AU - Abdulkadir Elshafie, AU - Ali Al-Bemani, AU - Sanket Joshi, PY - 2017/08/27 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY USING BIOTRANSFORMATION TECHNIQUE ON HEAVY CRUDE OIL JF - GEOMATE Journal JA - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GEOMATE VL - 13 IS - 36 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://geomatejournal.com/geomate/article/view/3035 SP - 75-79 AB - <p>Abundance of heavy crude oil resources and costly enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques<br>necessitate development of inexpensive heavy oil recovery methods. Microbial EOR (MEOR) techniques are<br>environmentally friendly and need little input of energy to produce MEOR agents. One potential application of<br>MEOR is in the biotransformation of heavy oil where bacteria break heavier fractions of heavy crude oil to<br>lighter compounds; thus, improving oil recovery. In this study, two spore forming bacteria: Bacillus subtilis AS2<br>and Bacillus licheniformis AS5, which were isolated from heavy oil (13.3 °API) contaminated soil samples from<br>a heavy oil field, Oman, were tested for their biotransformation abilities. Bacterial growth was analyzed by<br>optical density measurements and heavy crude oil recovery was determined by core flooding experiments. At<br>aerobic biodegradation flask experiments, M2 medium spiked with glucose had the highest bacteria growth and<br>crude oil biodegradation in comparison with: (1) M2 medium with no added chemicals and (2) M2 medium<br>spiked with sodium thiosulfate. At anaerobic in situ conditions Berea sandstone core flooding experiments,<br>additional 2.9% and 3.1% of residual oil saturation was recovered by B. subtilis AS2 and B. licheniformis AS5<br>respectively after one week of incubation. By increasing the incubation time and inoculation percentage for<br>isolate AS5, the oil recovery increased to 5.0%. When glucose was added to M2 medium, AS5 oil recovery<br>increased to 16.4%.The results showed that locally isolated bacterial strains have the potential for<br>biotransformation of heavy oil and enhanced oil recovery.</p> ER -