Influence of pore-crack environment on heat propagation of underground coalfield fire: A case study in Daquanhu, Xinjiang, China

Abstract

The development of pores and cracks in coalfield fire area promote the abnormal temperature, the greenhouse effect, and the release of toxic gases. It is of great significance to study the dynamic distribution characteristics of temperature field and concentration field of typical gas products in a coalfield fire area under different pore-crack environments for revealing the spreading law of underground coalfield fire. In this paper, the combined effect of coal combustion chemical reaction, heat energy transmission, flue gas seepage and pore-crack environment were considered. Taking Daquanhu coalfield fire area as an example, an optimized multi-field coupling model, which included the chemical reaction of coal combustion, convection heat transfer in cracks, heat transfer in porous media, gas seepage and improved partial differential equation of pore-crack evolution was constructed. The coalfield fires area was divided into combustion zone, caving zone, sagging subsidence zone, crack zone. The evolution law of temperature field, CO2 concentration field in the coalfield fire area under different air leakage and geological crack conditions was analysed. The results showed that the temperature development of coalfield fire is divided into rapid heating stage and stable development stage. At the rapid heating stage, the greater the air leakage flow was, the faster the maximum temperature rise in the combustion zone. At the stable development stage, with the air leakage decreased, the thermal buoyancy increased. The greater the number of cracks was, the greater the area of the drying zone (673.15 K < T < 1073.15 K) closed to the crack zone. The influence of crack environment on heat flux in the sagging subsidence zone and crack zone was obvious. The total heat flow in the crack zone was about 25 times that in the caving zone. The relationship between the maximum temperature in the combustion zone and the CO2 concentration at the crack outlet showed an exponential model (ExpGro1 exponential model). The area spread by coalfield fire increased linearly with the rang of surface temperature abnormal. The research results provided a basis for judging the spread trend of coalfield fire and extracting coalfield fire of heat energy.