Investigating dynamic underground coal fires by means of numerical simulation

Abstract

SUMMARY Uncontrolled burning or smoldering of coal seams, otherwise known as coal fires, represents a worldwide natural hazard. Efficient application of fire-fighting strategies and prevention of mining hazards require that the temporal evolution of fire propagation can be sufficiently precise predicted. A promising approach for the investigation of the temporal evolution is the numerical simulation of involved physical and chemical processes. In the context of the Sino-German Research Initiative ‘Innovative Technologies for Detection, Extinction and Prevention of Coal Fires in North China,’ a numerical model has been developed for simulating underground coal fires at large scales. The objective of such modelling is to investigate observables, like the fire propagation rate, with respect to the thermal and hydraulic parameters of adjacent rock. In the model, hydraulic, thermal and chemical processes are accounted for, with the last process complemented by laboratory experiments. Numerically, one key challenge in modelling coal fires is to circumvent the small time steps resulting from the resolution of fast reaction kinetics at high temperatures. In our model, this problem is solved by means of an ‘operator-splitting’ approach, in which transport and reactive processes of oxygen are independently calculated. At high temperatures, operatorsplitting has the decisive advantage of allowing the global time step to be chosen according to oxygen transport, so that time-consuming simulation through the calculation of fast reaction kinetics is avoided. Also in this model, because oxygen distribution within a coal fire has been shown to remain constant over long periods, an additional extrapolation algorithm for the coal concentration has been applied. In this paper, we demonstrate that the operator-splitting approach is particularly suitable for investigating the influence of hydraulic parameters of adjacent rocks on coal fire propagation. A study shows that dynamic propagation strongly depends on permeability variations. For the assumed model, no fire exists for permeabilities k < 10 −10 m 2 , whereas the fire propagation velocity ranges between 340 m a −1 for k = 10 −8 m 2 , and drops to lower than 3 m a −1 for k = 5 × 10 −10 m 2 . Additionally, strong temperature variations are observed for the permeability range 5 × 10 −10 m 2 < k < 10 −8 m 2 .