Klaus Wallmann

Gas-hydrates form under high pressure - low temperature conditions in the presence of high concentrations of hydrate-forming gases (e.g. CH4, H2S, CO2 or small hydrocarbons) and H2O. In industrial gas production and delivery in pipelines, gashydrates can form rapidly and block even large diameter pipelines, which often leads to dangerous process shutdown. Hence, gas-hydrate inhibition has been a major focus in flow assurance research for many decades [1]. Conventionally, industrial flow assurance relies on adding large amounts of chemicals (~30 vol%) to the pipeline flow (e.g. methanol or ethylene glycol). With upcoming interest in producing natural gas from marine gas-hydrate reservoirs, novel environmentally friendly and sustainable gas-hydrate inhibition strategies are needed. We hypothesize that microorganisms at natural marine oil and gas seeps have developed effective mechanisms inhibiting gas-hydrate formation to avoid being frozen inside a solid gashydrate matrix. These microorganisms have not been described so far, but would be of keen scientific interest not only to better understand microbial activity and diversity at deep sea oil and gas seeps (objective of research topics R03, R07) but also to open a novel way towards establishing a biological, “green” gas-hydrate inhibition technology (research topic R04). We propose to study microbial gas-hydrate inhibition mechanisms in active biomass from sediment samples collected at the Eel River oil and gas seeps in summer 2014 [2]. To address our objectives we will use our high-pressure incubation systems and advanced monitoring strategies, which allow controlled simulation of deep sea seep environments and selective enrichment of relevant microorganisms.