Experimental investigation of efficiency of MEOR process in a carbonate oil reservoir using Alcaligenes faecalis: Impact of interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration mechanisms

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) is a term which is attributed to the process of utilizing bacterial activity for increasing the recovery factor of oil reservoirs. This process relies on several mechanisms especially interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration mechanisms. The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the impact of these mechanisms during MEOR process for microorganism isolated from formation water of one of the Iranian southwest carbonate oil reservoirs. The isolated microorganism was identified to be Alcaligenes faecalis. The optimum condition for growth of microorganism was found at 28 °C, pH = 7, carbon to nitrogen ratio of 30 and 3% salinity. Results show that the selected microorganism is able to reduce the interfacial tension between formation brine and crude oil from 28.1 mN/m to 8.4 mN/m and alter the wettability of reservoir rock from approximately 156° to 86° which represents a change from oil-wet condition toward intermediate-wet. Results show that the isolated microorganism is able to produce 8.2% and 5.2% additional oil recovery in respective shut in and quick flooding scenarios. This show that the isolated microorganism is efficient in production of additional oil as a part of tertiary oil recovery process.