Mechanism of action of Geobacillus stearothermophilus on different shapes of residual oil

Abstract

Feeding on crude oil and activator in porous medium, microbes remain active on the Oil-water interface under simulated reservoir conditions. At the same time, microbes degrade the residual oil and change the wettability of pore wall. Consequently, the displacement exhibits a decrease of 51.86% in membrane residual oil and an increase of 17.44% in recovery compared with water flooding. The Geobacillus stearothermophilus producing bio-emulsifier and its metabolic products can effectively emulsify reservoir crude oil and reduce the oil-water interfacial tension. In the end and the formed emulsion featured high viscosity can improve the oil flow rate and expanded wave volume of injected fluid. Correspondingly, the cluster-like, columnar residual oil were reduced by 64%, 68% respectively. In the micro porous test cell, the in-situ cultured microbes rely on specific life activities (interfacial tropism and in situ metabolism, etc.) to strip the residual oil off the wall of orifice deep inside the blind-ends, which cannot be achieved by the exogenous injection method. After the in-situ microbial culture process, the residual oil in deep blind-ends was reduced by about 47%, and the recovered oil was increased about 15% compared with exogenous injection method.