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Dual-Porosity Coupled Borehole Gas Flow Model: A New Method for Inversion of Coal Seam Permeability

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Abstract

The permeability of a coal seam is an important index for coal mine gas control and coalbed methane development, and its magnitude determines the degree of difficulty of gas drainage. To obtain the permeability value, a dimensionless mathematical model for dual-porosity borehole gas-coupled flow in a coal seam was established and adopted using a simulator developed by our group. A new method of inversion was developed to determine the fracture permeability coefficient λf and the matrix micro-channel diffusion coefficient Km by fitting the simulated results with onsite measured data. A range of simulations quantified the effects of different dimensionless parameters on gas migration. The results verified the feasibility of the inversion method based on the high matching degree of the fitted results, and the dimensionless mathematical model was accurate. The desorption and release of adsorbed gas from the center to the surface in coal matrices were heterogeneous, and unsteady states and gas migration times in coal matrices cannot be neglected. The new method can be introduced to analyze the problem of gas migration in different coal reservoirs, simplify the corresponding calculation and computational processes, and provide guidance in determining the permeability of coal seams.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51874315). Additionally, we greatly appreciate the comments of the editor and reviewers, which provided beneficial suggestions for our research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Emergency Management and Safety Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), Beijing, 100083, China

    Jia Liu, Yueping Qin & Tianbai Zhou

  2. Madaotou Coal Company, Datong Coal Group, Datong, 037000, China

    Yu Gao

Authors
  1. Jia Liu
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  2. Yueping Qin
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  3. Tianbai Zhou
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  4. Yu Gao
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Correspondence to Yueping Qin.

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Liu, J., Qin, Y., Zhou, T. et al. Dual-Porosity Coupled Borehole Gas Flow Model: A New Method for Inversion of Coal Seam Permeability. Nat Resour Res 29, 3957–3971 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-020-09701-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-020-09701-8

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