Abstract
Methane content in a coal seam is a necessary parameter for evaluating coal bed gas, and it poses an environmental risk to underground coal mining activities. Keeping in pace with comprehensive studies of coal bed gas, 12 coal samples were selected from the Sitarampur block of Raniganj Coalfield for analysis. The Petrographic examination illustrated that significant values of reactive macerals present in samples demonstrate that organic matter is dominated by the prominent source of aromatic hydrocarbons with a minor proportion of aliphatic hydrocarbon, which falls in the region of (Type III) kerogen, confirms the suitability for the potential of hydrocarbon generation. “A” factor (aliphatic/aromatic bands) and “C” factor (carbonyl/carboxyl bands) value concluded that the sample has the lowest aromaticity and the highest hydrocarbon-generating potential, which was also validated by the Van Krevelen diagram. The Van Krevelen diagram plots between the H/C and O/C ratio indicate that coal samples lie in the type III kerogen, and bituminous coal (gas prone zone) is present in the block, which is confirmed by the cross-plot between desorbed and total gas (cc/g). The in situ gas content values are high enough to produce methane from coal beds. The overall study concludes that the Sitarampur block from Raniganj Coalfield is suitable for hydrocarbon generation and extraction.
Highlights
Natural gas discoveries have been made in many basins around the world, and governments are paying close attention and focusing on exploration (Abudeif et al 2016; Attia et al 2015; Radwan et al 2021)
The literature reveals that Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is extensively employed to characterize various source rocks to determine hydrocarbon generation potential (Ganz and Kalkreuth 1991; Mishra et al 2018; Varma et al 2018)
A factor (> 0.664) and C factor (> 0.501) value of studied samples demonstrates that samples have moderate aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbon (Chen et al 2012; Yao et al 2011)
Summary
Natural gas discoveries have been made in many basins around the world, and governments are paying close attention and focusing on exploration (Abudeif et al 2016; Attia et al 2015; Radwan et al 2021). Natural gas has become a promising substitute for coal and plays a significant role in. The literature reveals that coal is a sedimentary rock, with complex pore and fracture structure (Gao et al 2014). The macro–micro pores in coal provide extremely massive surface areas for methane, and it accumulates as a free, adsorbed, and dissolved state (Kumar et al 2018; Wang et al 2020). The different ranks of coal, mineral matter and maceral composition significantly influence the methane sorption capacity (Goraya et al 2019; Moore et al 2014). The FE-SEM and EDX analysis were significantly used for organic matter association with mineral matter and coal surface structure
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