"Eat the oil" spit out "methane" "Wukong fungus" eat dry squeezed every drop of crude oil

On May 13, in the laboratory of the Institute of Microbiology of the Institute of Petroleum Engineering and Technology of Shengli Oilfield, Lin Junzhang, an expert of the Institute of Microbiology, held a test tube to configure the concentration of
bacterial liquid.

This is not an ordinary liquid bacteria, but a newly discovered methanogenic archaea
.
In the 3 heavy oil development blocks of Sinopec Shengli Oilfield, a kind of archaea that can independently and directly degrade petroleum to produce methane was discovered for the first time, which rewrote the textbook understanding that
petroleum degradation of methane requires the coordinated participation of multiple microorganisms and multi-step metabolism.

Jointly cooperated by the Key Laboratory of Microbial Oil Production of Sinopec in Shengli Oilfield, the Biogas Science Research Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture, Shenzhen University and the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology in Germany, a major breakthrough has been made in the basic research of microbial oil recovery, and the research results have been published in the world-renowned scientific journal "Nature"
.

Wang Weidong, chief expert of Shengli Oilfield, said that in the past, it was believed that methane-producing archaea could only be produced through four pathways, such as acetic acid fermentation, carbon dioxide reduction, methyl lysis and oxymethyl
conversion.
The new findings reveal a whole new pathway for archaea to produce methane, bypassing all traditional metabolic steps and reducing methane production time from more than 200 days to 60 days
in one step, from hydrocarbon degradation to methane production.

After the ground pressure "top" oil, water injection "drive" oil, chemical agents "wash" oil, Shengli Oilfield still has about 50% of the crude oil trapped in the ground, it is difficult to be exploited and utilized
.

"The existing development technology can only achieve a maximum oil recovery of 60%, is there a bacterium that turns liquid crude oil into gaseous natural gas?" More than a decade ago, a bold idea popped into Wang Weidong's
mind.

Wang Weidong said that at present, the oil recovery rate of domestic oil is less than 50%, while the oil recovery of natural gas is as high as 90% or more, and the degradation of liquid crude oil into gaseous methane by bacteria can improve energy efficiency and greatly extend the economic development life
of old oilfields.

The main component of crude oil is complex hydrocarbons composed of long carbon chains
.
The dominant mechanism of microbial oil recovery is to use the emulsification and viscosity reduction of microorganisms, "this process is like the process of fermentation of rice to brew mash", through the reduction of viscosity and energy increase, improve the fluidity
of crude oil.

Block 3 is a microbial oil recovery technology test area, and in recent years, the block has increased the production of crude oil by more than 80,000 tons
.
In the process of tracking the microbial oil recovery of the reservoir, Wang Weidong's team collaborated with the Biogas Science Institute and found that the bacteria degraded the oil to produce methane at an abnormally fast
time.
Through in-depth research, it was found that there is a new type of methane-producing archaea that can directly complete the decomposition work on its own, and the methane production time under the simulated reservoir conditions in the laboratory is only two months
.

Powerful and short metabolic time, someone has given this powerful methanogenic archaea the title
of "Wukong fungus".

The journal Nature believes that this discovery has taken a big step forward in the study of methanogenic archaea, providing new insights
into both basic research and future applications.

A good living environment is the prerequisite for
doing a good job.
At present, Wang Weidong's team is studying the growth environment of new methane-producing archaea, eliminating the interference factors that may affect the growth of archaea in the reservoir, creating a good ecology for the growth of archae, and making cutting-edge technical reserves
for the later development of the oilfield.