ECBM Processes

Keka Ojha
Department of Petroleum Engineering
IIT(ISM), Dhanabad
Current status: Global scenario
USA China Australia Indonesia

Nation

CBM gas in place >500 Tcf >500 Tcf >500 Tcf 453 Tcf

▪ Excellent ▪ Challenging ▪ Excellent ▪ Excellent

▪ Mostly high gas ▪ Low gas saturation & ▪ Mostly high gas ▪ Mostly high gas
Reservoir quality saturation & permeability saturation & saturation &
permeability permeability permeability

Fully mature Struggling Development Exploration

Development Production: Production: Production: Multi-billion dollar
stage Stable 5 Bcfd 145 MMcfd +600 MMcfd consolidation

▪ BP ▪ BP ▪ BG group ▪ BP
▪ ConocoPhillips ▪ ConocoPhillips ▪ ConocoPhillips ▪ Exxonmobil
Major companies ▪ Chevron ▪ Chevron ▪ Total ▪ Total
in CBM activity ▪ ExxonMobil ▪ (left due to poor ▪ Shell ▪ Santos
▪ Anadarko geology) ▪ Santos ▪ Eni
▪ KOGAS

10-12-2020 Slide No. 2

 Why to use ECBM process?
• Recovery percentages for CMM/CBM projects typically
range from between 30% and 60%. Based on pilot and
simulation exercises, ECBM may be able to boost these
recovery rates by an additional 20% to 30%.
• Huge water disposal makes the process costly
• Slow diffusion may cause delayed production
 Type of ECBM

- Gas injection (N2, Flue Gas and CO2)

- Microbial
 Mechanism
• Reduce the overall pressure, usually by dewatering the
formation either through pumping or mining
• Reduce the :partial pressure
(i) Rate of desorption of enhancement
(ii) Permeability the methane by injecting
(iii)Increase in surface area (iv)Change in free gas partial
another inert gas
pressureinto the information
(iv) Increase gas content
• Replace the methane on the surface with another compound,
such as CO2.
• Generate more methane by methanogenation using microbes
• Enhance surface area for faster desorption
• Enhance permeability for better recovery
CO2 injection- Mechanism
Competitive adsorption
 CO2 Injection and ECBM

• CO2 injection is more helpful in ECBM if huff and puff technology is used in place of continuous injection, which
causes swelling of coal and reduction in permeability resulting in a reduction in recovery factor.
• Inclusion of chemical interaction of CO2 with coal minerals during elongated soaking will result in different
recovery
 Coal swelling
• Coal swells and shrinks as a result of adsorption and desorption of gases, respectively. Swelling
and shrinking, thus, change the original volume of the coal developing linear and volumetric
strains. Linear strain is defined as change in length with respect to the initial length of the
specimen. Volumetric strain is the change in volume with respect to the initial volume.
• The volume changes occur as a result of viscoelastic relaxation of the cross-linked
macromolecular network of coal, upon dissolution of gas in its structure (Larsen, 2004). Swelling
of coal upon gas adsorption occurs due to energy balance.
• Change in surface energy of coal during adsorption is balanced by elastic energy alteration,
resulting in volume changes (Pan and Connell, 2007). Penetration of CO2 in cross-linked
macromolecular network of coal, at high pressure, causes structural changes and rearrangements.
• Coal responses to penetration of gases by altering its structure to a more stable structure resisting
further penetration of CO2 (Karacan, 2003, 2007).
• Swelling increases with pressure and thereafter the curve reaches a plateau indicating completion
of swelling. Volumetric strain reduces with increasing injection gas densities. The phenomena is
attributed to mechanical compaction of the sample by injection gas pressure (Day et al., 2008b).
 After effect CO2 injection
1) In general, swelling occurs during the continued injection of CO2 in methane saturated coal. However, some studies revealed that
both the swelling and shrinkage occur which may result in the development of more secondary porosity if CO2 is soaked for
a longer period, like carbon cyclic (huff and puff) process.

2) The synergistic combination of the techniques (FE-SEM, AFM, LPA-N2, and MICP) provides a unique insight into the complexity
of coal morphology on nano and meso length scales. Outcomes of the analyses confirm that samples undergo noticeable
alterations in surface morphology and pore characteristics with the CH4 adsorption/CO2 injection treatment though the
pore geometry remains unchanged.

3) The increase in fractal dimension attributes to the secondary porosity formation due to the development of additional microcracks.
Resulted from the simultaneous desorption of methane and adsorption of ScCO2, shrinkage and swelling in the coal matrix
occur which in turn causes the development of stress and finally microcracks in the coal matrix.

4) Pore compressibility is being reduced after a longer soaking period. Additionally, supercritical CO2 behaves like plasticizer
by affecting the coal polymer structure, where it dissolutes the pore and cleat filling minerals and resulting in an increase
in roughness and skewness that have increased by a minimum value of 22.7%, 41% respectively.
 Limitations/ Barriers to Implementation
The potential barriers or limitations to ECBM fall into the three broad
categories: geologic, economic, and policy.

Geological
• Homogeneity
• Simple structure
• Permeability >1 md
• Depth 300-1,500 meters
• Concentrated coal geometry
• Production rates
• Development timing
• Water disposal
• Amount of available gas
Economic
• Cost of CO2
• Cost of N2
• Availability of injectant gas
• Value of methane
• Cost of processing
• Cost of implementation
• Transportation

Policy/Legislation
• Tax or CO2 Credits
• Mine safety regulations
 MECBM
• Currently, CBM produced via natural thermogenic and/or biogenic
processes is readily available for extraction from gas-productive coal
seams worldwide.
• However, the higher rate of demand versus production and the possibility
to stimulate CBM generation from gas-free coal seams drive interest in
developing strategies to accelerate CBM production biogenically.
• Studies have been conducted to stimulate the growth and activity of the
coal seam microbiome in-situ and in small-scale version via nutrient
amendments, and/or through chemical pretreatments to enhance CBM
production
• For microbially enhanced CBM production, we need to consider the sites
where microbial activities are present.
Location map of the basins where MECBM activities starts
 Microbial CBM generation
Methanogenesis occurs under anaerobic conditions (Rice and Claypool, 1981; Scott,
1999), typical of most subsurface organic-rich environments, such as coal seams, oil
reservoirs, and black shales (Lovley and Chapelle, 1995).
However, the matrix porosity of coals (pores typically <50 nm in diameter) is usually
too small for microorganisms (typically 1000–3000 nm) to inhabit (Scott, 1999).
This provides limited surface area for the microorganisms to interact with the coal.
As a result, microbial communities that degrade coal and produce methane live
mainly within fractures (cleats) in the coal seams (typically 3–10 μm wide), or at the
interface of coal with overlying or underlying rock layers (Scott, 1999).
Increasing permeability of coal helps facilitate methane production (i.e., enhances
transport of gas to the wellbore; Solano-Acosta et al., 2007), and would likely help
carry injected nutrients, water, and/or microorganisms to additional coal surfaces.
In addition, the survival of micro-organisms depend on the availability of nutrients
and the environment.
 MECBM
• Understanding and improving the microbial process of bio-gasification is the key to enhance biogenic
methane production from coal in-situ.

• Biogenic CBM is the result of coal-to-methane conversion by a diverse, natural microbial community

• The biological process of microbial methanogenesis in coal has been hypothesized to begin with the
solution of organic intermediates from the coal geopolymer.

• These soluble organics are then be biodegraded by microorganisms into substrates that are utilized by
the anaerobic methanogens to produce CH4 and CO2.

• This natural bioconversion process may be stimulated by introducing manufactured nutrient solutions,
consisting mostly of metal ions, yeast extract, peptone and methanol.

• Such bioconversion experiments at laboratory scale have shown that under optimal conditions, the
biogenetic methane yield and content after 55 days are potentially 2900 ft3/ton and 70% from powdered
Illinois bituminous coal (Zhang et al., 2015, 2016a).

• Field-scale tests have also been completed in commercial wells in the Powder River and Uinta Basins to
generate additional bio-gas in areas where microbial CBM production has already been present.
Possible steps of biodegradation of coal to
methane
 MECBM
• Currently, the microbial injection is used to enhance the methane recovery from
coalbed.
• This technique is environmental friendly, no damage is made to the reservoir and
more methane is other than the already generated methane is possible to produce.
• MECBM technique is to inject nutrient, either with or without methanobacterials,
into coal seams to reactivate and accelerate the growth of coal-dependent
methanogenesis and to increase bioavailability of coal organics.
• However, methanogenesis is presumed to mostly occur inside permeable fractures
and macro-pores.
• MECBM strategies for success are mainly focused on: 1) Development of effective
nutrient recipes; 2) Increasing microbial access to coal and amendments; and
3) Promotion of nutrient injection.
• This technique is economical compared to CO2-ECBM process
• Reservoir having microbial activity is selected for MECBM
Microbial ECBM
Four main categories of MECBM techniques:

• Microbial stimulation

• Microbial augmentation

• Physically increasing microbial access to coal and distribution of

amendments

• Increasing the bioavailability of coal organics

 Microbial stimulation:
• Microbial stimulation involves the addition of nutrients (such as nitrogen and
phosphorus) and/or micro-nutrients (such as vitamins and trace metals) to coal seams
to stimulate methane production from microorganisms that are indigenous to the coal
formations.

• Nutrients may be added to coal to stimulate microbial growth where microbial methane
generation is active in order to increase methane production, or added to areas where
there is no history of methane production in an attempt to stimulate the growth of
methanogenic communities and shift redox conditions to methanogenesis

• The primary goal of microbial stimulation is to stimulate coal-dependent

methanogenesis.

Therefore, it has been suggested that MECBM injections should target the colonizers and
degraders of coal to degrade the coal and produce intermediary products that can be
converted to methane by methanogens
 Microbial augmentation
• Microbial augmentation is the process of adding new or additional microorganisms
to coal in order to enhance or initiate microbial CBM production.
• Additions may consist of a single microorganism or a consortium of
microorganisms (i.e., Bacteria and Archaea) with variable functions selected for in
laboratory cultures.
• Microorganisms may be added because they are seen as more productive than the
current active microorganisms in the coal beds, or because microbial CBM is not
currently being produced due to a lack of microbial communities present in the
coal.
• In addition to adding microorganisms to the coal bed, redox conditions or salinity
of the coal bed may have to be adjusted to optimize the growth of native or exotic
consortia.
 Physically increasing microbial access to coal
and distribution of amendments
Because microorganisms are typically too large for the pore matrix of coal (Scott, 1999) and are limited to
coal fractures (cleats), one MECBM technique is to increase the surface area available for microbial
colonization.

However, methanogenesis is presumed to mostly occur inside permeable fractures and macro-pores. The
meso-/micro-pores in the coal matrix are typically too small for microorganisms (Scott, 1999; Zou et al.,
2013). Meanwhile, the reservoir permeability of many coal fields, such as in Illinois, is < 1 mD. Extensive
research has indicated that permeability is the most important factor in CBM production

This may be accomplished through grinding of coal (typically ex-situ), creating a chamber in the coal
seam through burning, fracturing the coal (e.g., hydraulic fracturing), dissolving coal using underground
solution to create cavities or increase porosity, or other method.
 Increasing the bioavailability of coal organics
• The approach of increasing the bioavailability of coal organics involves chemically breaking down the coal
geopolymers so that microorganisms along the pathway of generating methane from coal can use the by-
products.

• The biotic and abiotic process of breaking down coal into intermediates that methanogens can use to make
methane is often considered a rate-limiting step in methanogenesis.

• Using a solvent or some other means (e.g. alcohols or esters of phosphorus, surfactants, biosurfactants,
emulsified soybean oil) to increase the bioavailability of coal organics could potentially bypass this rate-limiting
step.

• There has been some concern that this could alter the quality (i.e., BTUs; 1 BTU is ~1055 joules) of the coal
although laboratory studies have reported a maximum fraction of coal converted to methane of 0.44 wt.%
(Papendick et al., 2011).

• Should be careful about the selection of chemicals. It is also possible that amendments could include chemicals
that are harmful to the methanogens or that could contaminate drinking water resources. Chemically increasing
the availability of coal organics could be accomplished through adding chemicals to dissolve the coal matrix.
Ciris Energy Process
Ciris’ MECoM approach
(i) introduces nutrients to the coal bed through a
continuous-flow injection process. Nutrients are
injected into the coal seam with water through an
injection well under pressure, and the same amount of
water is removed from the coal seam by production
wells to continuously supply microorganisms with
nutrients.
(ii) This process circulates 1000-2000 barrels of water per
day through the coal seam.
(iii)The pilot project uses 4 injection wells surrounded by
13 production wells with 10 acre (~40,500 m2 )
spacing (Ciris Energy, 2013; Downey and Verkade,
2012; Fig. 6B)
(iv) Projects in Austrailia and Powder River basin