The Role of Microorganisms in the Recovery of Oil -Proceedings of 1976Engineering Foundation Conferences Held in Easton,Maryland on November 9-14, 1975.

摘要

This conference addresses the national need for an in-depth assessment of recovery techniques which could increase our national oil reserves. Progress on recovery of oil from oil shale has been made in improving the permeability of the oil shale by the action of bacterial systems which appear to convert kerogen into heavy crude oil. Enthusiasm was shown for the use of biological products to be used as possible oil releasing agents. It was felt that many of these materials could be tested on a large scale within several years. The most popular biological material in secondary recovery at the present time is derived from bacterial fermentation and is basically a long chain,water soluble polymer. Some major topics discussed include: (1) origin,generation,and maturation of petroleum; (2) present technology for oil recovery; (3) present technology for shale oil and tar sands recovery; (4) methane oxidation; (5) microbial metabolism of alkanes; (6) microbial metabolism of cycloalkanes; (7) methanogenesis; (8) environmental and nutritional constraints of microbial hydrocarbon utilization in water;and (9) current status of microbial shale oil recovery.