Pressurized upflow reactor system for the bioconversion of coal to methane: Investigation of the coal/sand interface effect

Microbial generation of coal bed methane (CBM) represents a significant source of natural gas on Earth. While biostimulation has been demonstrated in batch cultures, environmental parameters such as overburden pressure and formation water flow need to be tested at the laboratory scale to understand in situ potential. We designed and constructed a high-pressure (HP) flow-through reactor system that simulates in situ conditions of underground coal seams. Two stainless-steel columns contained coal from the Powder River Basin (PRB), USA, or a coal/sand mixture to represent the interface of coal seams with sandstone layers, which are hypothesized to exhibit higher methanogenesis rates in situ. The system was filled with CBM formation water, inoculated with a methanogenic enrichment from PRB coal beds, and stimulated with algal biomass as a nutrient. The reactors were incubated under pressure (5.4 atm) and flow of CBM water (0.01 mL/min), and control batch cultures were incubated at ambient pressure and without flow (± amendment). Dissolved and headspace methane concentrations were analyzed over time by gas chromatography for 75 days. The pressurized reactors exhibited longer latency periods than ambient pressure controls, but methane production did not reach a plateau phase, which might reflect the impact of scale on the inoculum. The coal/sand reactor exhibited higher methane production than the coal-only reactor, a pattern also observed in the corresponding controls, suggesting an interface effect on methanogenesis. This study indicates that the HP flow test system we designed is well suited for the study of methanogenesis and provides a successful demonstration of CBM generation from the PRB in field-relevant laboratory conditions as a precursor to meso‑scale demonstrations.