Environmental Constraints
Several factors concomitantly affect microbial growth and activity. In oil reservoirs, such environmental constraints permit the establishment of criteria to assess and compare the suitability of various microorganisms. Those constraints may not be as harsh as other environments on Earth. For example with, connate brines the salinity is higher than that of sea water but lower than that of salt lakes. In addition, pressures up to 20 MPa and temperatures up to 80 °C, in oil reservoirs, are within the limits for the survival of other microorganisms.
Some environmental constraints creating selective pressures on cellular systems that may also affect microbial communities in oil reservoirs are:
Read more about this topic: Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery
Famous quotes containing the word constraints:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)