Coal structure identification based on geophysical logging data: Insights from Wavelet Transform (WT) and Particle Swarm Optimization Support Vector Machine (PSO-SVM) algorithms

Abstract

Coal structure is closely related to microscopic and macroscopic properties of coal, and its accurate identification is of great significance to coalbed methane (CBM) reservoir evaluation, hydraulic fracturing performance and production efficiency prediction. The identification of coal structure based on geophysical logging data has become a popular topic as well as a challenge. The emerging Machine Learning (ML) provides convenience for this issue. Under this background, in the case of the Shanxi Formation No. 3 coal seam and the Taiyuan Formation No. 15 coal seam in Mabidong Block, Qinshui Basin, China, this paper proposed a new coal structure identification method based on geophysical logging data using Wavelet Transform (WT) and Particle Swarm Optimization Support Vector Machine (PSO-SVM) algorithms. Our results showed that the vertical resolution of logging data can be effectively improved when sym5 wavelet basis and third level decomposition were selected in wavelet decomposition, and 4.5 was selected as the weighting coefficient in wavelet reconstruction. The coal structure prediction model based on the logging data processed by WT was established by PSO-SVM algorithm, where PSO was used for parameter optimization (optimal penalty factor C and width parameter σ) and SVM with Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel was used for model establishment. The Hold-out Cross Validation (HO CV) method was used to test the generalization ability of the prediction model, and the accuracy (ACC) of coal structure prediction in the training set and testing set was 94.26% and 88.46%, respectively. The prediction model was applied to identify the coal structure of two coring wells and the predicted coal structure class was consistent with the true coal structure class, confirming the validity of the model. The coal structure prediction results in the whole study area showed that the tectonic conditions control the coal structure. This work provides new insights for coal structure identification.