The sight of an abandoned oil pump in the fields throughout Kansas isn’t rare. Jenn-Tai Liang, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, and his fellow researchers may be able to change that.

Thanks to a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Liang will be able to study the use of molecules called biosurfacants to recover oil from reservoirs in carbonate rock. Such reservoirs are common in central and western Kansas, where wells are idle due to high operating costs and stranded oil.

“At times, you’re pumping out ten times more water than oil,” Kansas Geological Survey senior scientist Tim Carr said.

Surfacants are used to produce oil from wells that no longer flow naturally or are resistant to waterflooding. Surfacants work in a way similar to dishwashing detergent. Currently, chemical surfacants in high concentrations are injected into an oil well with water. The surfacant interacts with the rock of the reservoir to make it more water-absorbent. The rock then sucks up the water while releasing trapped oil.

Chemical surfacants are expensive, however, and many smaller oil companies and operators cannot afford them. They could also be harmful toward the environment. Liang said that while a goal of the project was to make the technology available to private enterprise, that wasn’t why the Department of Energy was funding the project.

“The DOE is particularly interested in the environmental aspect of the project,” Liang said. “Their entire mission is advocating the beneficial reuse of organic materials to produce energy.”

Working with the KU School of Engineering’s Tertiary Oil Recovery Project and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Liang will study how dilute concentrations of biosurfacant interact with carbonate reservoirs and how much oil can be drawn with their use. One of the project’s goals is to understand why the surfacant makes the rock more water-absorbent. The biosurfacant is the product of a bacteria feeding off high-starch agricultural waste from potato, rice, or wheat processing plants. It is the same bacteria used to clean the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

Kansas produces a significant amount of the oil in the United States. KU engineer Richard Pancake said much of that oil was high quality by market standards, with an API gravity of 40 and low sulfur content. And there is no shortage. Pancake estimated that 60 percent of the supply was still in the ground. Carr said that Liang’s research could potentially add 30 more years of recovery to the states reservoirs.

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Top 10 oil

producing States

1. Texas (33.4 percent)

2. Louisiana (15.1 percent)

3. California (14.3 percent)

4. Oklahoma (8.0 percent)

5. Alaska (7.6 percent)

6. Wyoming (3.7 percent)

7. Kansas (3.7 percent)

8. New Mexico (2.8 percent)

9. Illinois (2.0 percent)

10. Mississippi (1.3 percent)

Source: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/us/