Experimental and numerical simulation study of microbial enhanced oil recovery using bio-surfactants

An experimental and numerical study were conducted to investigate the ability of bio-surfactant produced by the microbe Bacillus mojavensis strain JF-2 to recover residual oil from consolidated porous media. Experiments showed that the bio-surfactant at concentrations as low as 40.0 ppm. (0.04 mg/scc) and viscosified with 1000.0 ppm of polymer could recover 10.0 % to 40.0 % of residual oil when injected through sandstone cores at typical field rates.; A 2-phase, 10-component microbial enhanced oil recovery numerical simulator was modified to include reservoir salinity and facilitate surfactant and polymer injection. The effects of reservoir brine salinity and divalent ion effects on bio-surfactant and polymer adsorption, polymer retention, polymer viscosity, bio-surfactant interfacial tension and the shear rate effect on polymer viscosity were added to the simulator. Core flood experiments where JF-2 bio-surfactant viscosified with partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide was injected into Berea cores at waterflood residual oil saturation were simulated. The effects of brine salinity and hardness on surfactant and polymer behavior were tested and the core flood simulation results compared with the experimental results.; After the laboratory and simulation studies, a residual oil recovery method based on non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) contaminant removal from aquifers is discussed and functional form of the transport equation presented. In this method, residual oil is treated as another chemical species dispersed in porous media instead of a phase that is uniformly distributed across the media.