Abstract
Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) often occurs in environments that are poorly ventilated or under lean-oxygen environments in coal mines or coal seam outcrops. The understanding of the thermodynamic properties of CSC under lean-oxygen conditions is important to avoid safety and environmental problems. In this paper, the mass variation and critical temperature (the minimum temperature required for coal reaction in each stage) of six coals during CSC under lean-oxygen conditions were investigated using thermogravimetric methods. Furthermore, the thermodynamics parameters and kinetic compensation processes during CSC under lean-oxygen conditions were analyzed. The results showed that the oxidation and combustion of coal under lean-oxygen conditions was affected by the coal rank and oxygen concentration. The increase in the critical temperature was more significant when the oxygen concentration was reduced from 10 to 5%. The mechanism functions most likely to cause CSC at different oxygen concentrations were similar. The reaction mechanisms of high-rank coals at a low-temperature oxidation stage were more influenced by oxygen concentration than low-rank coals. Evaluations of kinetic behavior showed that activation energy decreased in a linear manner as the oxygen concentration decreased. The mathematical relationship between the activation energy and the pre-exponential factor indicated that there was a kinetic compensation process during CSC under lean-oxygen conditions. It is also worth noting that the effect of the coal rank on the thermodynamic characteristics of CSC is better than that of oxygen concentration. This work is helpful for enhancing the prediction and prevention of CSC.
Highlights
Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) is a natural objective phenomenon that has existed for millions of years.[1]
It can be seen that the kinetic behavior of high-rank coals during the process of lowtemperature oxidation is more influenced by the oxygen concentration, which is one of the reasons for most scholars to investigate the kinetic characteristics during low-temperature oxidation of CSC.[33−35,47,48]
An investigation was undertaken to understand the effect of coal ranks on the thermodynamic behavior during coal oxidation and combustion under lean-oxygen conditions
Summary
Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) is a natural objective phenomenon that has existed for millions of years.[1]. By studying the convective effect of bituminous coal ignition under enriched oxygen conditions, Liu[18] pointed out that nonuniform combustion occurred when coal was burned at an oxygen concentration of 21% and the Reynolds number of 2, 8, and 16. By TG experiments, Li26 investigated the thermodynamic parameters during CSC under lean-oxygen conditions and pointed out that the values of activation energy fluctuated marginally as the oxygen concentration varied. The current research studies on the influence of oxygen concentration on thermodynamic behaviors of CSC are mainly based on a single experiment condition, resulting in the inability to investigate the influencing factors of the kinetic parameters during CSC from multiple perspectives. Around 5 mg of each coal sample was taken for the experiment, and the ventilation flow rate was set to 30 mL/
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