Abstract
Abstract The world continues to rely heavily on petroleum as a primary energy source. However, a great fraction of the oil-in-place remains inaccessible to traditional recovery means. This review presents an update on the use of biotechnology to improve residual crude oil production from oil wells as a tertiary oil recovery method known as “microbial enhanced oil recovery” (MEOR). Our focus has been to critically discuss and analyze the recent research trends in this field, with special attention devoted to separately assessing both laboratory and field cases to better demonstrate the progress being made across different MEOR techniques. MEOR strategies reviewed here include the uses of selective plugging, biopolymers, wettability alterations, bioacids, biosolvents, and biosurfactants. Additionally, the emerging contributions of genetically-engineered microorganisms for MEOR purposes (GEMEOR) and enzyme-enhanced oil recovery (EEOR) are also analyzed. While further research must still be done to optimize MEOR methods for the oil industry, biotechnology-based methods hold much promise for oil recovery operations as well as for oil spill remediation.
Published Version
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