Abstract

Coal bed natural gas (CBNG) or coal bed methane (CBM) is considered as an untapped energy resource and accounts for over 3% of total natural gas produced in the US in 2016. Nature gas burns cleaner than coal and has been suggested as a “bridging fuel” to transition away from coal. In recent decades, scientific discoveries have demonstrated that in many of the world’s CBNG plays, the gas is biogenic in origin. The fact that coal is rich in organic carbon is found attractive, and recent studies suggest that biogenic coal bed natural gas can be enhanced through methods including bio-stimulation, bio-augmentation, chemical pre-treatment and supplement of external carbon sources. One of the key elements for coal-based methane production is the microbial populations that are capable of decomposing and transforming coal-derived organic compounds to methane. In this study, we first reported the identification of microbial communities of coal treated by permanganate for enhanced methane production. The results demonstrate that microbial communities involved in the bio-transformation of coal-derived carbon to methane are highly diverse. In addition, hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis appears to be the dominant pathway in producing biogenic natural gas in the samples used for this study. These findings may not only increase the understanding of operative mechanisms behind these complex transformations but also help in exploitation and optimization of field scale production of CBNG.

Keywords: Biogenic Methane, Coal bed Methane (CBM), Coal bed Natural Gas (CBNG), Microbial Communities In Coal, Permanganate