Abstract
The role of indigenous microbial communities in residual oil extraction following a recovery process is not well understood. This study investigated the dynamics of resident microbial communities in oil-field simulating sand pack bioreactors after the polymer flooding stage resumed with waterflooding and explored their contribution to the oil extraction process. The microbial community succession was studied through high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. The results revealed alternating dominance of minority populations, including Dietzia sps., Acinetobacter sps., Soehngenia sps., and Paracoccus sps., in each bioreactor following the flooding process. Additionally, the post-polymer waterflooding stage led to higher oil recovery, with hydroxyethylcellulose, tragacanth gum, and partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide polymer-treated bioreactors yielding additional recovery of 4.36%, 5.39%, and 3.90% residual oil in place, respectively. The dominant microbial communities were previously reported to synthesize biosurfactants and emulsifiers, as well as degrade and utilize hydrocarbons, indicating their role in aiding the recovery process. However, the correlation analysis of the most abundant taxa showed that some species were more positively correlated with the oil recovery process, while others acted as competitors for the carbon source. The study also found that higher biomass favored the plugging of high permeability zones in the reservoir, facilitating the dislodging of crude oil in new channels. In conclusion, this study suggests that microbial populations significantly shift upon polymer treatment and contribute synergistically to the oil recovery process depending on the characteristics of the polymers injected.
Key points
• Post-polymer flooded microbial ecology shows unique indigenous microbial consortia.
• Injected polymers are observed to act as enrichment substrates by resident communities.
• The first study to show successive oil recovery stage post-polymer flood without external influence.
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Data availability
All data generated during this study are available by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Funding
This work was supported by the IMPRINT2 SERB Department of Science and Technology project (Award no: IMP/2018/000589), the Department of Biotechnology project (Award no: BT/PR25132/NER/95/1034/2017), and ONGC. SR acknowledges the support of a Senior Research Fellowship from CSIR India (File no. 09/1131(0028)/2019-EMR-I). This work was also supported by departmental facilities that were generated by the DST FIST grant (SR/FST/LSI-676/2016) to the Department of Microbiology, Central University of Rajasthan.
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SR and AA conceived and designed the study. SR performed research and wrote the original draft. SR, AA, and GP analyzed the data, and GP and SJ performed writing – review and editing.
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Supplementary file 1 The raw reads of microbial communities analysis were deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (BioProject ID: PRJNA796728, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/796728). All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files. The experimental procedures, polymer flooding ORSBs recovery data, sequencing data (rarefaction curves, diversity indices, relative abundances), and procedures including crude oil standard preparation are in the Supplementary Information. (PDF 2781 KB)
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Rellegadla, S., Prajapat, G., Jain, S. et al. Microbial communities succession post to polymer flood demonstrate a role in enhanced oil recovery. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 107, 5531–5544 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-023-12673-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-023-12673-3