@article{SauerGlombitzaKallmeyer2012, author = {Sauer, Patrick and Glombitza, Clemens and Kallmeyer, Jens}, title = {A system for incubations at high gas partial pressure}, series = {Frontiers in microbiology}, volume = {3}, journal = {Frontiers in microbiology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-302X}, doi = {10.3389/fmicb.2012.00025}, pages = {9}, year = {2012}, abstract = {High-pressure is a key feature of deep subsurface environments. High partial pressure of dissolved gasses plays an important role in microbial metabolism, because thermodynamic feasibility of many reactions depends on the concentration of reactants. For gases, this is controlled by their partial pressure, which can exceed 1 MPa at in situ conditions. Therefore, high hydrostatic pressure alone is not sufficient to recreate true deep subsurface in situ conditions, but the partial pressure of dissolved gasses has to be controlled as well. We developed an incubation system that allows for incubations at hydrostatic pressure up to 60 MPa, temperatures up to 120 degrees C, and at high gas partial pressure. The composition and partial pressure of gasses can be manipulated during the experiment. To keep costs low, the system is mainly made from off-the-shelf components with only very few custommade parts. A flexible and inert PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) incubator sleeve, which is almost impermeable for gases, holds the sample and separates it from the pressure fluid. The flexibility of the incubator sleeve allows for sub-sampling of the medium without loss of pressure. Experiments can be run in both static and flow-through mode. The incubation system described here is usable for versatile purposes, not only the incubation of microorganisms and determination of growth rates, but also for chemical degradation or extraction experiments under high gas saturation, e.g., fluid-gas-rock-interactions in relation to carbon dioxide sequestration. As an application of the system we extracted organic compounds from sub-bituminous coal using H2O as well as a H2O-CO2 mixture at elevated temperature (90 degrees C) and pressure (5 MPa). Subsamples were taken at different time points during the incubation and analyzed by ion chromatography. Furthermore we demonstrated the applicability of the system for studies of microbial activity, using samples from the Isis mud volcano. We could detect an increase in sulfate reduction rate upon the addition of methane to the sample.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Sauer2013, author = {Sauer, Patrick}, title = {Liberation of low molecular weight organic acids from sedimentary organic matter and their role on microbial activity}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-68830}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Low molecular weight organic acids (LMWOAs) are important nutrients for microbes. However, most LMWOAs do not exist freely in the environment but are bound to macromolecular organic matter, e.g. kerogen, lignite and coal. During burial and geological maturation of sedimentary macromolecular organic matter biological and abiological processes promote the liberation of LMWOAs into the surrounding sediment. Through this process, microbes in sedimentary subsurface environments are supplied with essential nutrients. To estimate the feedstock potential of buried macromolecular organic matter to many environments it is important to determine the amount of LMWOAs that are bound to such a matrix. However, high-pressure and high temperature are a key feature of deep subsurface environments, and these physical parameters have a profound influence on chemical reaction kinetics. Therefore it is essential for the estimation of the feedstock potential to generate high-pressure and high temperature for the liberation of LMWOAs to recreate true in-situ conditions. This work presents a newly developed, inexpensive incubation system for biological and geological samples. It allows the application of high-pressure and high temperature as well as a subsampling of the liquid phase without loss of pressure, thereby not disturbing the on-going processes. When simulating the liberation of LMWOAs from sedimentary organic matter, the newly developed incubation system produces more realistic results than other extraction systems like Soxhlet. The extraction products remain in the extraction medium throughout the extraction, influencing the chemical conditions of the extraction medium. Sub-bituminous coal samples from New Zealand as well as lignite samples from Germany were extracted at elevated temperature (90˚C) and pressure (5 MPa). The main LMWOAs released from these low rank coals were formate, acetate and oxalate. Extraction efficiency was increased by two to four times for formate, acetate and oxalate in comparison to existing extraction methods without pressurisation and with demineralised water. This shows the importance of pressure for the simulation of true in-situ conditions and suggests that the amount of bioavailable LMWOAs is higher than previously thought. With the increase in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and the enhanced recovery of oil and gas (EOR/EGR), more and more CO2 becomes injected into the underground. However, the effects of elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide on sedimentary organic matter are rarely investigated. As the incuabtion system allows the manipulation of the composition and partial pressure of dissolved gasses, the effect of highly gas-enriched (CO2, CO2/SO2, CO2/NO2; to simulate flue gas conditions) waters on the extraction yield of LMWOAs from macromolecular organic matter was evaluated. For sub-bituminous coal the concentrations of all LMWAOs decreased upon the addition of gas, irrespective of its composition, whereas for lignite formate always and acetate mostly increased, while oxalate decreased. This suggests an positive effect on the nutrient supply for the subsurface microbiota of lignite layers, as formate and acetate are the most common LMWOAs used for microbial metabolism. In terrestrial mud volcanoes (TMVs), sedimentary material is rapidly ascending from great depth to the surface. Therefore LMWOAs that were produced from buried macromolecular organic matter at depth are also brought up to the surface, and fuel heterotrophic microbial ecosystems at the surface. TMVs represent geochemically and microbiologically diverse habitats, which are supplied with organic substrates and electron acceptors from deep-seated hydrocarbon-generating systems and intersected shallow aquifers, respectively. The main electron donor in TMVs in Azerbaijan is sulphate, and microbial sulphate reduction leads to the production of a wide range of reduced sulphur species that are key players in several biological processes. In our study we estimated the effect of LMWOAs on the sulphur metabolising activity of microorganims in TMVs from Azerbaijan. The addition of a mixture of volatile fatty acids containing acetate and other LMWOAs showed significant positive response to the sulphate reduction rate (SRR) of samples of several mud volcanoes. Further investigations on the temperature dependency of the SRR and the characterisation of thermophilic sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB) showed a connection between the deep hot subsurface and the surface.}, language = {de} } @inproceedings{KurbelNowakAzodietal.2015, author = {Kurbel, Karl and Nowak, Dawid and Azodi, Amir and Jaeger, David and Meinel, Christoph and Cheng, Feng and Sapegin, Andrey and Gawron, Marian and Morelli, Frank and Stahl, Lukas and Kerl, Stefan and Janz, Mariska and Hadaya, Abdulmasih and Ivanov, Ivaylo and Wiese, Lena and Neves, Mariana and Schapranow, Matthieu-Patrick and F{\"a}hnrich, Cindy and Feinbube, Frank and Eberhardt, Felix and Hagen, Wieland and Plauth, Max and Herscheid, Lena and Polze, Andreas and Barkowsky, Matthias and Dinger, Henriette and Faber, Lukas and Montenegro, Felix and Czach{\´o}rski, Tadeusz and Nycz, Monika and Nycz, Tomasz and Baader, Galina and Besner, Veronika and Hecht, Sonja and Schermann, Michael and Krcmar, Helmut and Wiradarma, Timur Pratama and Hentschel, Christian and Sack, Harald and Abramowicz, Witold and Sokolowska, Wioletta and Hossa, Tymoteusz and Opalka, Jakub and Fabisz, Karol and Kubaczyk, Mateusz and Cmil, Milena and Meng, Tianhui and Dadashnia, Sharam and Niesen, Tim and Fettke, Peter and Loos, Peter and Perscheid, Cindy and Schwarz, Christian and Schmidt, Christopher and Scholz, Matthias and Bock, Nikolai and Piller, Gunther and B{\"o}hm, Klaus and Norkus, Oliver and Clark, Brian and Friedrich, Bj{\"o}rn and Izadpanah, Babak and Merkel, Florian and Schweer, Ilias and Zimak, Alexander and Sauer, J{\"u}rgen and Fabian, Benjamin and Tilch, Georg and M{\"u}ller, David and Pl{\"o}ger, Sabrina and Friedrich, Christoph M. and Engels, Christoph and Amirkhanyan, Aragats and van der Walt, Est{\´e}e and Eloff, J. H. P. and Scheuermann, Bernd and Weinknecht, Elisa}, title = {HPI Future SOC Lab}, editor = {Meinel, Christoph and Polze, Andreas and Oswald, Gerhard and Strotmann, Rolf and Seibold, Ulrich and Schulzki, Bernhard}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-102516}, pages = {iii, 154}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Das Future SOC Lab am HPI ist eine Kooperation des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts mit verschiedenen Industriepartnern. Seine Aufgabe ist die Erm{\"o}glichung und F{\"o}rderung des Austausches zwischen Forschungsgemeinschaft und Industrie. Am Lab wird interessierten Wissenschaftlern eine Infrastruktur von neuester Hard- und Software kostenfrei f{\"u}r Forschungszwecke zur Verf{\"u}gung gestellt. Dazu z{\"a}hlen teilweise noch nicht am Markt verf{\"u}gbare Technologien, die im normalen Hochschulbereich in der Regel nicht zu finanzieren w{\"a}ren, bspw. Server mit bis zu 64 Cores und 2 TB Hauptspeicher. Diese Angebote richten sich insbesondere an Wissenschaftler in den Gebieten Informatik und Wirtschaftsinformatik. Einige der Schwerpunkte sind Cloud Computing, Parallelisierung und In-Memory Technologien. In diesem Technischen Bericht werden die Ergebnisse der Forschungsprojekte des Jahres 2015 vorgestellt. Ausgew{\"a}hlte Projekte stellten ihre Ergebnisse am 15. April 2015 und 4. November 2015 im Rahmen der Future SOC Lab Tag Veranstaltungen vor.}, language = {en} }