China National Petroleum Corporation has also incorporated “Green and Low‑Carbon Development” into its core corporate strategy. According to its 2025 ESG Report, CNPC invested RMB 41.46 billion in new‑energy and new‑material businesses in 2025, representing a 72.4% year‑on‑year increase. Oilfields across the country are accelerating the replacement of chemical agents, hazardous‑waste reduction and harmless treatment of produced water.
Amid this wave of industrial transformation, Seedling Bio has achieved the industrial‑scale commercialization of bio‑based rhamnolipid using its proprietary synthetic‑biology platform. The product is widely applicable to oil‑field exploitation, pipeline transportation, environmental protection and other core scenarios, delivering one‑stop green‑transition solutions for oil‑field enterprises that balance production enhancement, operational cost reduction and environmental compliance.
Seedling Bio Patent Certificate for Rhamnolipid Invention
Seedling Bio holds an invention patent for its proprietary rhamnolipid‑producing strain (Patent No.: ZL202511190286.9), which delivers core technical assurance for consistent product performance.
I. Addressing Industry Pain Points: Five Major Dilemmas of Conventional Oilfield Development
For decades, the petroleum industry has relied on chemical agents to resolve operational challenges. Nevertheless, high costs, heavy pollution and elevated compliance risks have emerged as critical bottlenecks restricting the industry’s green development:
1. Rapid production decline in mature oilfields; severe pollution from chemical flooding and high costs for water treatment.
2. Low efficiency in heavy‑oil recovery, characterized by high viscosity and substantial energy consumption for lifting.
3. Paraffin deposition and corrosion in pipelines, aggravated by secondary pollution from chemical additives.
4. Difficult oily‑sludge disposal featuring high costs, safety hazards and low resource‑recovery efficiency.
5. Mounting pressure for environmental compliance; risks of excessive chemical residues and regulatory penalties.
To tackle these common industrial challenges, Seedling Bio’s bio‑based rhamnolipid leverages the natural advantages of biosurfactants and provides an innovative solution balancing economic and environmental benefits.
II. Dispelling the Myth of “Expensive Biological Agents”: Technology‑driven Cost Reduction for Large‑scale Application
A widespread misconception within the industry holds that biological agents are costly and impractical for field deployment. Through dual‑track innovation in upstream fermentation technology and downstream application processes, Seedling Bio achieves excellent cost‑performance while guaranteeing product performance and batch‑to‑batch consistency. Its overall application cost outperforms conventional chemical agents:
✓ No further purification required: Seedling Bio’s rhamnolipid fermentation supernatant can be directly applied on‑site at oilfields, eliminating high‑cost refining‑purification steps and substantially cutting raw‑material procurement and processing expenses.
✓ High‑yield strains for source‑level efficiency and cost optimization: Built upon proprietary high‑yield genetically‑engineered strains paired with precisely‑optimized fermentation protocols, substrate conversion efficiency and volumetric fermentation productivity are greatly improved. Technological advances bring down mass‑production costs while preserving environmental and economic merits.
III. Full Coverage of Eight Practical Oil‑field Application Scenarios
Scenario 1: Heavy‑oil Viscosity Reduction and Enhanced Oil Recovery
Technical Mechanisms:
1. Emulsification (core for production increase): Breaks continuous solid/high‑viscosity residual oil in reservoirs into micron‑sized oil droplets, enabling flow of otherwise immobile crude oil.
2. Ultra‑low interfacial tension: Reduces interfacial tension between oil‑droplets, water and rock formations, preventing re‑aggregation of dispersed oil droplets and re‑adsorption of crude oil onto rock surfaces.
3. Wettability alteration: Modifies rock‑surface wettability from oil‑wet to water‑wet, drastically lowering crude‑oil adhesion to rock and facilitating removal of residual oil trapped in rock pores.
Field‑trial Data:
・Binnan Block, Shengli Oilfield: Following field tests with bio‑based flooding agents, the block’s overall daily oil output rose by 18%, substantially unlocking previously‑hard‑to‑produce heavy‑oil reserves.
・Large‑scale deployment at Shengli Oilfield: Our self‑developed bio‑composite‑flooding technology has been implemented across 32 well‑groups in 5 major heavy‑oil blocks, achieving cumulative incremental oil production of 39 000 tons during the trial phase.
・Xing‑13 Block, Daqing Oilfield: After rhamnolipid‑system injection for merely three months, well‑group daily oil output increased from 16.9 tons to 20.5 tons. All 10 test oil wells delivered higher production, with cumulative incremental oil of 1 893.4 tons for the well‑group.
These cases demonstrate that bio‑based rhamnolipid has transitioned from laboratory R&D to industrial‑scale deployment, becoming an indispensable option for oil‑field green transformation and stable‑enhanced production.
Scenario 2: Green Biosurfactant Flooding — Replacement for Alkylbenzene Sulfonates
Alkylbenzene sulfonates, widely adopted in conventional chemical flooding, present well‑known drawbacks including poor biodegradability, high produced‑water‑treatment costs and potential reservoir‑formation damage. Published studies indicate that rhamnolipid can be compounded with natural bio‑additives such as lecithin to formulate fully bio‑based flooding agents with prominent strengths:
・High oil‑displacement efficiency: Core‑flooding laboratory tests achieve 68%‑70% oil‑recovery factor.
・Low oil‑water interfacial tension, zero environmental hazards and no extra burden for produced‑water treatment.
It serves as a key candidate technology for Green Enhanced Oil Recovery (GEOR).
Scenario 3: Integrated Fracturing‑Imbibition for Low‑permeability Reservoirs
To address fast post‑fracture production decline and poor mobilization of residual oil within matrix micro‑pores in tight reservoirs, rhamnolipid can be blended with sulfamic‑acid‑based surfactants and alkalis as an imbibition additive for fracturing‑fluid systems:
✓ Reduces capillary resistance, enabling fracturing‑fluid penetration into tight micro‑pores and expanding stimulated reservoir volume.
✓ Gradient wettability reversal converts capillary force into driving force for oil displacement.
✓ Emulsifies and encapsulates residual oil to boost spontaneous oil‑imbibition capacity of formations.
✓ Fully biodegradable, greatly mitigating secondary reservoir‑formation damage.
Scenario 4: Full‑range Flow Assurance for Pipeline Transportation
| Function | Rhamnolipid Concentration | Performance |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy‑oil pipeline drag reduction | 100~1000 ppm | 20%‑50% reduction in pipeline transportation resistance. |
| Crude‑oil viscosity reduction | 100~9000 ppm | Crude‑oil viscosity reduction ranging from 10% to 90%. |
| Pipeline corrosion inhibition | 50 mg/L DBNPA + 500 mg/L rhamnolipid | Significantly suppresses microbiologically‑influenced corrosion of X80 pipeline steel induced by SRB. |
| Pipeline blockage removal | Regular dosage | Emulsifies and strips oily sludge, asphaltenes and paraffin wax, replacing high‑pollution chemical cleaning agents. |
Scenario 5: Oily‑Sludge / Oil‑Sand Treatment
Featuring both hydrophilic and lipophilic moieties, rhamnolipid enables efficient oil‑sludge‑water separation via three‑step mechanisms:
1. Adsorption: Lipophilic groups selectively adsorb onto crude‑oil molecules on oily‑sludge surfaces.
2. Desorption: Weakens adhesion forces between crude‑oil and solid particles, detaching oil films completely from sand‑particle surfaces.
3. Emulsification & Dispersion: Encapsulates separated crude‑oil into micron‑sized droplets stably dispersed in the aqueous phase for subsequent recovery.
Validated by Published Industry Research
Laboratory results: Fermentation broth containing rhamnolipid treats diverse oily‑sludge samples, delivering an average oil‑removal rate of 70% within 72 h, and petroleum‑hydrocarbon biodegradation rate reaching 45% over 8‑day incubation.
Field‑application data: In one oil‑field pilot, rhamnolipid was used to clean 850 m³ oily sludge, recovering nearly 774 m³ crude‑oil within five days with outstanding resource‑recovery efficiency.
Compared with the chemical surfactant SDS: 338 mg/L (10 CMC) rhamnolipid elutes 4106 mg/L crude‑oil, whereas 72 g/L (30 CMC) SDS only achieves 3333.3 mg/L crude‑oil elution. Rhamnolipid provides superior elution efficiency at lower dosage.
Scenario 6: Oil‑Gas‑Water Separation
Produced fluids from tight‑oil fracturing exhibit high emulsification stability. Conventional demulsifiers deliver poor performance, leading to excessive water content in exported crude‑oil and heavy downstream produced‑water‑treatment burdens. Published experimental data shows that after rhamnolipid is compounded with conventional polyether‑based chemical demulsifiers:
✓ Water‑removal efficiency exceeds 90%, crude‑oil recovery rate surpasses 98%.
✓ Water content of recovered oil ＜ 0.3%, suitable for direct refining.
✓ Separated aqueous phase is easy‑to‑treat with no secondary pollution.
Scenario 7: Offshore Drilling — Eco‑friendly Functional Additives
To satisfy environmental‑protection requirements for offshore cementing operations, a bio‑based pre‑flush fluid is formulated with rhamnolipid‑to‑sophorolipid ratio of 2:1. Validated across six core indicators including surface activity, temperature‑salt tolerance, system compatibility, wellbore cleaning, second‑interface bonding performance and gas‑migration prevention, the formulation meets cementing‑engineering specifications while complying with offshore pollutant‑discharge regulations.
Scenario 8: Environmental Remediation
| Soil petroleum‑hydrocarbon remediation | Rhamnolipid achieves 63% total petroleum‑hydrocarbon removal rate for heavily‑contaminated soil, outperforming synthetic surfactants such as Triton X‑100 and Tween 80. |
| Heavy‑metal‑contamination remediation | Rhamnolipid‑saponin blends generate synergistic effects. At optimal HLB ~10.5, nickel removal reaches 87%, chromium 71%, vanadium 70%, with optimal remediation pH value at 5. |
| Spent‑drilling‑fluid treatment | Rhamnolipid and amino‑based high‑adsorption groups are grafted onto β‑cyclodextrin to prepare eco‑friendly adsorbents. The material efficiently sequesters heavy‑metal ions and high‑molecular‑weight organics from spent water‑based drilling fluids and enables harmless disposal via flocculation‑sedimentation, replacing traditional flocculants prone to secondary pollution. |
| Marine oil‑spill remediation | Acting as a biodispersant, rhamnolipid promotes emulsification‑dispersion of diesel and other petroleum hydrocarbons and boosts hydrocarbon‑degradation performance of indigenous microbes. The enhancement is most pronounced at 40 mg/L (degradation rate up to 90%). |
Technical data and figures in this article originate from published literature and industry reports. Actual field performance shall be evaluated against site‑specific operating conditions.
About Us
Seedling Bio is a leading Chinese synthetic‑biology enterprise focused on R&D, manufacturing and oil‑field‑application solution development for biosurfactants. Leveraging proprietary strain‑engineering technologies and large‑scale fermentation processes, we have developed oil‑field‑grade rhamnolipid products and deliver end‑to‑end technical services for major oilfields ranging from laboratory‑formula optimization to on‑site engineering implementation.
Our Core Competencies
Industrial‑scale Production Capacity: Large‑scale bio‑fermentation manufacturing base supplies industrial‑grade rhamnolipid fermentation broth or concentrated liquid in stable quality to satisfy large‑volume on‑site deployment.
Customized Technology: Custom formula development and application‑engineering design tailored for reservoir geology, crude‑oil properties and process requirements of individual oilfields.
Full‑value‑chain Services: One‑stop services including sample supply, laboratory evaluation, on‑site‑test guidance and technical training.
Cost‑effective Operations: Proprietary high‑yield genetically‑engineered strains improve fermentation efficiency. Fermentation supernatant can be directly used in oil‑field operations without further refining, cutting costs at both production and application stages.
If you are seeking:
✅ Green alternatives for heavy‑oil viscosity reduction & enhanced oil recovery
✅ Eco‑friendly additives for fracturing fluids in low‑permeability reservoirs
✅ Low‑pollution processes for oily‑sludge cleaning & pipeline blockage removal
✅ Bio‑based pre‑flush fluids for offshore‑oilfield cementing projects
Please feel free to contact us via direct message or inquiry! Green low‑carbon oil production represents an irreversible industry trend. Seedling Bio empowers petroleum‑sector green transformation with synthetic‑biology technologies to realize triple benefits: production increase, cost reduction and environmental protection.
