Joel R. Sevinsky earned his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his PhD. from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dr. Sevinsky was a Senior Principal Investigator of LUCA Technologies. He stated their goal is to create real-time microbial methane gas in existing coal beds at economic rates and volumes in the anticipation of providing a sustainable energy. In his presentation he provided background information on coal bed membranes, challenges encountered, and their approach to community profiling.

Dr. Sevinsky’s research centered on identifying coal beds needing microbial community restoration and introducing a mixture of amendments to promote the production of methane. This means that in the study of coal bed membranes, microbes are introduced and transported to promote methane production. The microstructure of coal allows for micro-organisms to live in the fractures of the coal.  Each coal well removes water to reduce the underground pressure and promote the release of methane from the coal.  Gas move up the well and out to the compressors. Methane depletion is experienced once the levels of methane extracted falls below profitable margins. At this point it was usual to abandon the well and drill a new one.  LUCA Technologies is taking abandoned wells, prior to being decommissioned by collapsing the well and filling it with concrete, and studying the microbial ecology to introduce a mixture of microbes to restore the community of methane producing organisms.

LUCA system’s proprietary mixture of amendments is gravity fed into coal steam. Though the percentages of each mixture are in house information only, the ingredients used for restoration can be found on their website.  The study of the coal beds restored provides a promising outlook for the ability to create a sustainable energy. However, the challenge is a constant struggle to identify the cause of the biodegradation of each coal bed and develop a microbial community capable of maintaining methane production. Each coal substrate is undergoing different levels of biodegradation in producing methane and it is in the biodegradation state when microbes are introduced as a catalyst for methane production. Dr. Sevinsky identifies their approach to community profiling to be a five step process: 1) collect micro-organisms, 2) isolate DNA, 3) sequence DNA, 4) examine/record type and micro-organisms, and 5) compare microbial community. The microbial catalyst mixture will have the most profound effect on the rate of production when the quantities needed are properly identified.  However, this is a continuous process as the microbial communities are constantly changing in order to obtain the desired methane yield.

Collecting the micro-organisms is accomplished by retrieving water from the coal bed.  Isolating the DNA is the critical part as DNA has variable regions for micro-organism identification. Once the DNA is sequenced and the organisms identified, community profiling is realized through pyro-sequencing. UniFRAC is a tool for phylogenetic beta diversity in which the phylogenetic tree is created to develop distance matrix and determine the cluster of environments.  This portion requires high data computational analysis. Throughout his research, Dr. Sevinsky has found that in pre-restoration there are well to well differences in baseline community structures but that there is no one specific micro-organism that will help restore the community with respect to bacteria.  In post-restoration, restoration with a specific amendment will create specific community profiles. At this point, Dr. Sevinsky introduced several scatter plots of the weighted UniFRAC diversity matrix of bacterial community profiling of the Powder River and of well community profiles sequencing DNA.

In concluding his presentation, Dr. Sevinsky brought forth other areas of consortium research: stable isotope probing for dissection of metabolic pathways, model compound enrichment, and enrichments in colony isolation.  He also stated the reasons for funding the research as: a target for restoration strategies, tools for real time monitoring, and tools for asset evaluation.  Which raises the question of is there a methanogenic community? And what restoration strategies should they prioritize? He closed his presentation by stating that modern applied microbiology is a multidisciplinary science and played a video of well methane bubbling out of water @ 900 ft below ground to provide insight of their typical field work.

For further reading consider the following:

• Journal: Jones, E. J.P., Voytek, M. A., Warwick, P. D., Corum, M. D., Cohn, A., Bunnell, J. E., Clark, A. C., Orem, W. H., Bioassay for Estimating the Biogenic Methane-Generating Potential of Coal Samples, International Journal of Coal Geology, Volume 76, Issues 1-2, 2 October 2008, Pages 138-150, ISSN 0166-5162.
• Paper: Kakadjian, S., Garze, J., Zamora, F., Enhanching Gas Production in Coal Bed Methane Formation with Zeta Potential Altering System, SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, 18-20 October 2010, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Society of Petroleum Engineers.
• Journal: Strapoc, D., Picardal, F. W., Turich, C., Schaperdoth, I., Macalady, J. L., Lipp, J. S., Lin, Y.S., Ertefai, T. F., Schubotz, F.,  Hinrichs, K.U., Mastalerz,  M.,  Schimmelmann,  A., Methane-Producing Microbial Community in a Coal Bed of the Illinois Basin, Applied Environmental Microbiology, Volume 74, 15 April 2008, Pages 2424-2432