Abstract
The relationship between the spontaneous combustion characteristics and the functional group distributions of coal was studied by analyzing different samples of coals using infrared spectroscopy. The analysis demonstrated that coal with a higher content of oxygen-containing functional groups and aliphatic hydrocarbons is more likely to spontaneously combust. Compared with coal which showed little spontaneous combustion tendency, coal, which is prone to spontaneous combustion, presented stretching bands of aromatic C=C at 1.604 cm–1, –CH2 at ~2857–2851 and 1443 cm–1, and C–O at 1030 cm–1 with the absorption peaks at those stretching bands showing the greatest difference. After being oxidized at low temperature, the aliphatic hydrocarbons and oxygen-containing functional groups changed significantly, while the absorption peak intensity of aromatic rings exhibited only slight changes. The results verified that diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy is an efficient method for investigating the spontaneous combustion characteristics and the variation of the active groups in the oxidation of coal at low temperature.
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