Methanation, which is known as a method of producing CH4 from CO2 and H2, is expected as a next-generation energy technology, which can make effective use of CO2. Conventional methanation is carried out on the ground, the capacity of the facilities is limited, and we cannot expect the large production amount of CH4. In contrast, the method using microbe living in underground can be expected to produce CH4 on a large scale. On the other hand, predicting the behavior of microbial methanation remains unresolved and has not been put to practical application yet. Therefore, this study focused on microbial methanation in reservoir and hence on the development of a numerical simulator to predict its behaviors, the growth of microbe and the accompanying promotion of CH4 production reaction.
The simulator developed deals with a one-dimensional, two-phase (gas and water), multi-component system to predict the CH4 production reaction by microbe and associated reservoir performance such as pressure and phase saturation. Hereafter, this simulator will be referred to as “MMS” (the Microbial Methanation Simulator).
