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Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources
This roadmap examines the future of microbiology research and technology in fossil fuel energy recovery. Globally, the human population will be reliant on fossil fuels for energy and chemical feedstocks for at least the medium term. Microbiology is already important in many areas relevant to both up...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4993181/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27506422 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.12396 |
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author | Head, Ian M. Gray, Neil D. |
author_facet | Head, Ian M. Gray, Neil D. |
author_sort | Head, Ian M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | This roadmap examines the future of microbiology research and technology in fossil fuel energy recovery. Globally, the human population will be reliant on fossil fuels for energy and chemical feedstocks for at least the medium term. Microbiology is already important in many areas relevant to both upstream and downstream activities in the oil industry. However, the discipline has struggled for recognition in a world dominated by geophysicists and engineers despite widely known but still poorly understood microbially mediated processes e.g. reservoir biodegradation, reservoir souring and control, microbial enhanced oil recovery. The role of microbiology is even less understood in developing industries such as shale gas recovery by fracking or carbon capture by geological storage. In the future, innovative biotechnologies may offer new routes to reduced emissions pathways especially when applied to the vast unconventional heavy oil resources formed, paradoxically, from microbial activities in the geological past. However, despite this potential, recent low oil prices may make industry funding hard to come by and recruitment of microbiologists by the oil and gas industry may not be a high priority. With regards to public funded research and the imperative for cheap secure energy for economic growth in a growing world population, there are signs of inherent conflicts between policies aimed at a low carbon future using renewable technologies and policies which encourage technologies which maximize recovery from our conventional and unconventional fossil fuel assets. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4993181 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49931812016-08-31 Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources Head, Ian M. Gray, Neil D. Microb Biotechnol Special Issue Articles This roadmap examines the future of microbiology research and technology in fossil fuel energy recovery. Globally, the human population will be reliant on fossil fuels for energy and chemical feedstocks for at least the medium term. Microbiology is already important in many areas relevant to both upstream and downstream activities in the oil industry. However, the discipline has struggled for recognition in a world dominated by geophysicists and engineers despite widely known but still poorly understood microbially mediated processes e.g. reservoir biodegradation, reservoir souring and control, microbial enhanced oil recovery. The role of microbiology is even less understood in developing industries such as shale gas recovery by fracking or carbon capture by geological storage. In the future, innovative biotechnologies may offer new routes to reduced emissions pathways especially when applied to the vast unconventional heavy oil resources formed, paradoxically, from microbial activities in the geological past. However, despite this potential, recent low oil prices may make industry funding hard to come by and recruitment of microbiologists by the oil and gas industry may not be a high priority. With regards to public funded research and the imperative for cheap secure energy for economic growth in a growing world population, there are signs of inherent conflicts between policies aimed at a low carbon future using renewable technologies and policies which encourage technologies which maximize recovery from our conventional and unconventional fossil fuel assets. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4993181/ /pubmed/27506422 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.12396 Text en © 2016 The Authors. Microbial Biotechnology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for Applied Microbiology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Special Issue Articles Head, Ian M. Gray, Neil D. Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
title | Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
title_full | Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
title_fullStr | Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
title_full_unstemmed | Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
title_short | Microbial Biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
title_sort | microbial biotechnology 2020; microbiology of fossil fuel resources |
topic | Special Issue Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4993181/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27506422 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.12396 |
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