This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will examine the feasibility of culturing naturally occurring bacterial consortium that exist in coal seams. These bacteria generate the bulk of the 450 million cubic feet of methane now being recovered daily from coal seams in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. However, only indirect studies have thus far been carried out on the character, environment, and activity of these organisms. Isolating the bacterial consortium will allow development of methods to detect critical parameters for biogenesis in the field and to determine conditions under which this biogenesis may be optimized. The commercial application of this project is in detection of new methane rich coal seams and in enhancement of methane production from existing coal seams.
