Numerical modelling of biophysicochemical effects on multispecies reactive transport in porous media involving Pseudomonas putida for potential microbial enhanced oil recovery application

•Developed kinetic and reactive transport model for Pseudomonas putida in porous media.•Parametric values for kinetic model are determined from experimental observations.•pH affects sucrose and biosurfactant concentration than microbe during its transport.•At pH 7.5, biosurfactant concentration is higher and it favours more oil recovery.•Higher resident time of slug and lesser Sw within reservoir improves oil recovery. pH and resident time of injected slug plays a critical role in characterizing the reservoir for potential microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) application. To investigate MEOR processes, a multispecies (microbes–nutrients) reactive transport model in porous media was developed by coupling kinetic and transport model. The present work differs from earlier works by explicitly determining parametric values required for kinetic model by experimental investigations using Pseudomonas putida at different pH conditions and subsequently performing sensitivity analysis of pH, resident time and water saturation on concentrations of microbes, nutrients and biosurfactant within reservoir. The results suggest that nutrient utilization and biosurfactant production are found to be maximum at pH 8 and 7.5 respectively. It is also found that the sucrose and biosurfactant concentrations are highly sensitive to pH rather than reservoir microbial concentration, while at larger resident time and water saturation, the microbial and nutrient concentrations were lesser due to enhanced dispersion.