Measurement and modeling of temperature evolution during methane desorption in coal

Abstract

The decrease of coal temperature has been confirmed by many tests during methane desorption in coal, including coal and gas outburst, but the thermal-dynamic process for methane desorption has not been quantitatively studied. Therefore, firstly, the coal temperature and gas pressure are measured by temperature and pressure sensors in the process of methane desorption. Secondly, isosteric heats of adsorption are calculated according to the adsorption isotherm. Finally, heat transfer model is established and simulate the temperature evolution during methane desorption in coal under different conditions (initial temperature and gas pressure). The real tests and simulation results show that a lot of heat will be absorbed from coal as methane desorbing, which causes the coal temperature will go down by 5.5 K, and methane desorption is no longer isothermal process. In the initial stage of methane desorption in coal, the coal temperature will decrease sharply to an extremely low value, then slowly rise to the previous ambient temperature. And at the same ambient temperature, the higher the initial methane equilibrium pressure is, the larger the temperature at the coal body center drops in the process of methane desorption. In the coal body, the farther away from the wall of the coal sample canister, the more significant the decrease of the coal body temperature is, and the longer the time is to reach extremely low value, which is mainly due to the different heat transfer coefficients at different positions in the coal body. The total specific power, which is a key index in heat transfer model to simulate the change of coal temperature, sharply decreases during methane desorption, because the methane desorption quantity in unit time decreases gradually. This study has an important practical significance to reveal the evolution mechanism of coal and gas outburst, and predict outburst with temperature change as an index.