Abstract
This article presents research results into the application of an artificial neural network (ANN) to determine coal’s sorption parameters, such as the maximal sorption capacity and effective diffusion coefficient. Determining these parameters is currently time-consuming, and requires specialized and expensive equipment. The work was conducted with the use of feed-forward back-propagation networks (FNNs); it was aimed at estimating the values of the aforementioned parameters from information obtained through technical and densitometric analyses, as well as knowledge of the petrographic composition of the examined coal samples. Analyses showed significant compatibility between the values of the analyzed sorption parameters obtained with regressive neural models and the values of parameters determined with the gravimetric method using a sorption analyzer (prediction error for the best match was 6.1% and 0.2% for the effective diffusion coefficient and maximal sorption capacity, respectively). The established determination coefficients (0.982, 0.999) and the values of standard deviation ratios (below 0.1 in each case) confirmed very high prediction capacities of the adopted neural models. The research showed the great potential of the proposed method to describe the sorption properties of coal as a material that is a natural sorbent for methane and carbon dioxide.
Highlights
Coal is a natural sorbent for gases such as carbon dioxide and methane
In order to determine the properties of a coal–gas system under laboratory conditions, two parameters are primarily used, sorption capacity a and effective diffusion coefficient De
Sorption capacity describes the ability of coal beds to accumulate gas, and the effective diffusion coefficient is decisive for the speed of gas release from coal beds
Summary
Coal is a natural sorbent for gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. These gases, present in large amounts in coal mines, are associated with the occurrence of natural hazards. Methane is noteworthy because of its presence in the strata, and its release as a result of mining and geological processes This hazard is related to the geology of the deposit, i.e., to the type of coal and the presence of cracks or fault zones [1,2,3,4]. Among methods used for gas-sorption measurements, gravimetric methods are of importance [5] In these methods, the amount of sorbed gas is directly determined on the basis of measuring the accumulation of the investigated sorbent’s mass after the sorbate is introduced into the gas system with constant pressure and temperature. These methods have a number of advantages [6,7]; Materials 2020, 13, 5422; doi:10.3390/ma13235422 www.mdpi.com/journal/materials
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