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Enhanced Oil Recovery by Potential Biosurfactant-Producing Halo-thermotolerant Bacteria Using Soil Washing and Sand-Packed Glass Column Techniques

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Abstract

Biosurfactants offer numerous advantages over the chemical surfactants, especially in energy and environment-related applications. Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is a technique to recover oil from reservoirs by using microbes and their metabolites. In present study, total sixteen morphologically distinct bacterial strains isolated from different salty areas of the district Khairpur Mir’s, Pakistan, were investigated for their MEOR potential. Screening assays for thermotolerance and halotolerance declared 7 out of 16 (43.75%) bacterial isolates as thermotolerant (capable of growing in the temperature range 60–70 °C) and halotolerant (tolerating NaCl concentrations up to 17%, w/v). Moreover, five of them were screened as biosurfactant producers. Among, the lowest surface tension reduction was achieved with biosurfactants produced by the strains KJ2MO (27.8 mN/m) and KJ2SK (29.3 mN/m). The biosurfactant activity was found stable at temperature (100–121 °C, 1 h) and pH (4–10). Moreover, maximum oil recovery was obtained with biosurfactant of bacterial strain KJ2MO (54.7%, 51.25%) followed by KJ2SK (44.7%, 40.5%), KJ1WB (37%, 35.5%) and KJ2MD (37.8%, 31.9%) by using either techniques, i.e., soil washing and sand-packed column, respectively. Moreover, the potent species were identified as Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes KJ1WB, Bacillus aerius KJ2MD, Bacillus licheniformis KJ2SK, and Bacillus subtilis KJ2MO using 16S rRNA ribo-typing. The investigated species were found to be promising biosurfactants producers having potential for enhanced oil recovery and could be used in other environmental applications like bioremediation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are extremely thankful for the support of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Government of Pakistan for funding this research under Start-up Research Grant program to the principle investigator.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Natural Science, Institute of Microbiology, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur Mir’s Sindh, 66020, Pakistan

    Irfan Ali Phulpoto, Bakhtiar Ali Jakhrani, Anwar Hussain Phulpoto, Asif Ali Panhyar, Nisar Ahmed Kanhar & Muneer Ahmed Qazi

  2. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China

    Irfan Ali Phulpoto

  3. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan

    Safia Ahmed

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  1. Irfan Ali Phulpoto
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  2. Bakhtiar Ali Jakhrani
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Correspondence to Muneer Ahmed Qazi.

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Phulpoto, I.A., Jakhrani, B.A., Phulpoto, A.H. et al. Enhanced Oil Recovery by Potential Biosurfactant-Producing Halo-thermotolerant Bacteria Using Soil Washing and Sand-Packed Glass Column Techniques. Curr Microbiol 77, 3300–3309 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-020-02172-3

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