Abstract—Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) represents the use of microorganisms to extract the remaining oil trapped up in reservoirs. Recently, the biosurfactant application in MEOR has been preferably encouraged over microorganisms due to their potential role in oil mobility and miscibility. The present study was conducted to develop practical microbial solutions and approaches for improving oil production. A newly isolated fungal strain Fusarium sp. BS-8 (JQ860113) produced an effective biosurfactant. The crude biosurfactant was able to reduce the surface tension of water from 72 mNm-1 to 32 mNm-1, with 71% hydrocarbon emulsifying index and an oil displacement activity (ODA) in the range of 7-13 cm. Under optimized conditions, up to 5.25 g L-1 crude biosurfactant was recovered from fermentation broth with ethyl acetate/methanol (5:1) with an ODA of 13 cm. A sand pack column was constructed to simulate an oil reservoir. The use of crude biosurfactant resulted in the additional oil recovery of 46% over untreated column. The biosurfactant was found to be stable at wide range of temperature (0-90°C), pH (5-9) and salt concentration (1-15%), suggesting it to be suitable candidate for biosurfactant mediated enhanced oil recovery.

Index Terms—Biosurfactant, MEOR, sand pack column, Fusarium sp. BS-8.

Muneer Ahmed Qazi, Mishal Subhan, Muhammad Ishtiaq, and Safia Ahmed are with Department of Microbiology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan (e-mail:qazi_muneer@yahoo.com, qazi_muneer@yahoo.com, ishi_ali@hotmail.com, safiamrl@yahoo.com).
Nighat Fatimais is with Department of Biotechnology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan (e-mail: nighatmrl@yahoo.com).

 

Cite:Muneer Ahmed Qazi, Mishal Subhan, Nighat Fatima, Muhammad Ishtiaq Ali, and Safia Ahmed, "Role of Biosurfactant Produced By Fusarium sp. BS-8 in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Through Sand Pack Column," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 598-604, 2013.