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Research Progress on the Mechanism and Potential Application of CH4 Bioconversion from CO2 in Oil and Gas Reservoirs

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  • 1.State Key Laboratory of EOR, Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development, CNPC, Beijing100083,China; 2.China University of Petroleum (Beijing) Heavy Oil Laboratory,Beijing102249, China;3.CSIRO Petroleum, P.O. Box 1130, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia

Received date: 2010-05-05

  Revised date: 2011-02-13

  Online published: 2011-05-10

Abstract

The bioconversion of CH4from the stored CO2 is a biotechnological solution that the injected CO2 is metabolized by indigenous microbes in depleted oil or gas reservoirs to produce CH4 by CO2 bioreduction pathway. It is potential applied and promising technology due to its environmental friendship for CO2 storage and sequestration, renewable energy of biogas CH4, extended oil and gas reservoirs development period, and the potential profit for enhanced gas or oil recovery. The CO2 Capture & Storage project and microbial diversity of reservoirs offer the solution feasibility. Hydrogenotrophic mesophilic or thermophilic methanogens are known to be common inhabitants in slightly saline formation water in oil and gas reservoirs. The distribution of CO2/H2 methanongens of biogas reservoirs changes with diagenetic stages. It has been shown that CO2 can be potentially bioconverted to CH4 in reservoirs under certain conditions. However, oil and gas reservoirs are complicated systems and the bioconversion is constrained by the relationships among the methanogens, fermentative bacteria and hydrogenproducing bacteria. The methanogen community structure and the cometabolization and competition between the two communities of Sulfate Reduction Bacteria (SRB) and methanogens may also impact the CO2 reduction. Compared to the discovered knowledge that CO2 bioreduction pathway is permissible, the process may be quite complicated to be realized in reservoirs. It is difficult to realize the CO2 bioreduction pathway without synthetic H2 supply. It is still a big challenge for both microbiologists and petroleum engineers to realize CH4 bioconversion from CO2 by parameters control in reservoirs. At present, the CO2 reduction research is at experimental stage in the laboratory, the breakthrough is to activate the suited reservoirs' microorganism consortium to realize the CH4 bioconversion in right way, to probe the profitable CH4 bioconversion rate and production velocity. Though the solution of CH4 bioconversion from injected CO2 in depleted oil and gas reservoirs is a fresh technique with less than ten years research history, it is believed that it is quite promising and will be applied for renewable energy and CO2 sequestration in the near future.

Cite this article

Wei Xiaofang, Luo Yijng, Liu Keyu, Shuai Yanhua . Research Progress on the Mechanism and Potential Application of CH4 Bioconversion from CO2 in Oil and Gas Reservoirs[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2011 , 26(5) : 499 -506 . DOI: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2011.05.0499

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