Microbial-derived bio-surfactant using neem oil as substrate and its suitability for enhanced oil recovery
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ORIGINAL PAPER-PRODUCTION ENGINEERING
Microbial‑derived bio‑surfactant using neem oil as substrate and its suitability for enhanced oil recovery Temitope Ogunkunle1 · Adesina Fadairo1,2 · Vamegh Rasouli2 · Kegang Ling2 · Adebowale Oladepo1 · Onyinyechi Chukwuma1 · James Ayoo3 Received: 7 July 2020 / Accepted: 5 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The limitation in the formulation and application of synthetic surfactants in petroleum industry is owing to their high cost of production or importation and their associated toxic effect which have been proven to be harmful to the environment. Hence it is vitally imperative to develop an optimum surfactant that is cost-effective, environmentally safe (biodegradable) and equally serves as surface acting agent. This study discusses the production of microbial produced bio-surfactant and its application in enhanced oil recovery. The bacteria Pseudomonas sp. were isolated from urine and allow to feed on neem seed oil as the major carbon source and energy. The crude bio-surfactant produced from the fermentation process was used to prepare three (3) solutions of bio-surfactants at different concentrations of 5 g/500 mL, 10 g/500 mL and 15 g/500 mL, and their suitability for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) was evaluated. Reservoir core samples and crude oil collected from the Niger Delta field were used to evaluate the EOR application of the microbial-derived surfactants. The sets of experimental samples were carried out using core flooding and permeability tester equipment, and the results obtained were compared with conventional waterflooding experiments. The three bio-surfactant concentrations were observed to recover more oil than the conventional waterflooding method for the two core samples used. Optimum performance of the produced microbialderived surfactant on oil recovery based on the concentrations was observed to be 10 g/500 mL for the two samples used in this study. Therefore, eco-friendly bio-surfactant produced from neem seed oil using Pseudomonas sp. has shown to be a promising potential substance for enhanced oil recovery applications by incremental recoveries of 51.9%, 53.2%, and 29.5% at the concentration of 5, 10, and 15 g/500 mL and 24.7%, 28.7%, and 20.1% at concentration of 5, 10, and 15 g/500 mL for the two core samples, respectively. Keywords Microbial derived bio-surfactant · Neem oil · Enhanced oil recovery · Pseudomonas sp. · Bio-degradable
Introduction Crude oil as a major energy source continues to be highly demanding, and this necessitates the oil and gas industry to explore every possible technology that is economically feasible to maximize the recovery of the field and maintain a balance in oil price (Oladepo et al. 2017, Sandersen et al.
* Adesina Fadairo [email protected] 1
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria
2
Department of Petroleum Engineering, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, USA
3
Chevron Nigeria Limited, Lagos, Nigeria
2012; Gao and Zekri 2011). This is because as mo
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