Oxidation and spontaneous combustion characteristics of particulate coal under stress–heat–gas interactions

Abstract

Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) is disturbed by complex downhole conditions. However, current research by scholars mainly focuses on the impact of single conditional disturbances on CSC, which is difficult to comprehensively characterize the oxidation and spontaneous combustion characteristics of granular coal in a complex environment. For this reason, a temperature-programmed gas chromatographer (TP-GC) hyphenated instrument and a C600 high-precision microcalorimeter was used for analysis. The variation rules of derived gas and oxidizing thermodynamic parameters in the coal oxidizing and heating process under stress-heat-gas interaction were obtained. The intrinsic action mechanism of stress-heat-gas interaction to increase the risk of spontaneous combustion of granular coal is described. The results showed that as the level of air leakage (AL) rate increased, the concentration of derived gases in the coal sample showed a “˄”-shaped trend, and the heat release intensity and heat release varied in stages, both reaching their peak at a leakage rate of 150 mL/min. Under different stress conditions, the heat release intensity and heat release of coal also reach their maximum at 150 mL/min, indicating a higher risk of spontaneous combustion of coal at 150 mL/min. As the stress increases, the coal‑oxygen reaction is inhibited, leading to a decrease in the concentration of derived gases and a reduction in the average heat release of the coal sample. This indicates that particulate coal is prone to spontaneous combustion when subjected to high air leakage rate and low stress conditions. The experimental results provide a theoretical basis for the prevention of CSC under complex conditions.