Priyanka Srivastava
University of New South Wales, Australia
Title: Neutral red mediated microbial production of methane and insight by micro-fluidics
Biography
Biography: Priyanka Srivastava
Abstract
Natural gas accounted for 25% of the primary energy source in Australia in 2015-16 and about 34% of this natural gas is produced from coal seam reservoirs (APPEA, 2018). Microbial production of methane nowadays is the main area of research interest. Methanogens and syntrophic bacteria play a major role in decomposing hydrocarbons present in the environment to produce methane. Decomposition of organic matter and production of methane are the results of multiple redox reactions carried out by different communities of bacteria but that actually can be manipulated by adding neutral red. In this study, we have proved that the addition of 250µM of neutral red in the cultures can increase methane production by 20µmoles. Queensland coal seam water and Jharia and Lithgow coal were used in this study. 20µmoles of methane has been produced in presence of 250µM of the neutral red solution and 5-10 µmoles of methane was produced with no neutral red. Microcosms containing neutral red indicated that neutral red played a major role by supporting the growth of the methanogens and syntrophic bacteria which results in the production of methane. In FTIR analysis, four spectra from the image indicated the change in chemistry in neutral red treated cultures across these regions: 1006.84 to1029.18 cm-1, 1445.9 to 1434.34 cm-1, 1596.65 to 1602.06 cm-1 and 2915.2-2917.82 cm-1. The growth of neutral red crystals was observed in 20-23 µm sized channels and bacteria were also observed on the coal surface by SEM. This indicates that neutral red could be a good electron mediator between syntrophic bacteria and methanogens to enhance the methane production from coal seams.