Effects of nutrient injection on the Xinjiang oil field microbial community studied in a long core flooding simulation device

Frontiers in Microbiology

Microbiology

Huiqiang Fan¹  Zhaoying Su¹  Yuan Yun¹  Xuefeng Tian¹  Wei Cheng¹  Xueqing Zhao¹  Dakun Liu¹  Guoqiang Li²  Ting Ma² 

[1] Key Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, China;Key Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, China;Tianjin Engineering Technology Center of Green Manufacturing Biobased Materials, Tianjin, China;

关键词: MEOR;    microbial community;    community structure;    nutrition;    food chain;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmicb.2023.1230274

 received in 2023-06-08, accepted in 2023-09-21,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) is an option for recovering oil from depleted reservoirs. Numerous field trials of MEOR have confirmed distinct microbial community structure in diverse production wells within the same block. The variance in the reservoir microbial communities, however, remains ambiguously documented. In this study, an 8 m long core microbial flooding simulation device was built on a laboratory scale to study the dynamic changes of the indigenous microbial community structure in the Qizhong Block, Xinjiang oil field. During the MEOR, there was an approximate 34% upswing in oil extraction. Based on the 16S rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing, our results indicated that nutrition was one of the factors affecting the microbial communities in oil reservoirs. After the introduction of nutrients, hydrocarbon oxidizing bacteria became active, followed by the sequential activation of facultative anaerobes and anaerobic fermenting bacteria. This was consistent with the hypothesized succession of a microbial ecological “food chain” in the reservoir, which preliminarily supported the two-step activation theory for reservoir microbes transitioning from aerobic to anaerobic states. Furthermore, metagenomic results indicated that reservoir microorganisms had potential functions of hydrocarbon degradation, gas production and surfactant production. Understanding reservoir microbial communities and improving oil recovery are both aided by this work.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Cheng, Fan, Yun, Zhao, Su, Tian, Liu, Ma and Li.