Monitoring the gasification area and its behavior in underground coal gasification by acoustic emission technique instead of temperature measurement

Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) requires monitoring of the gasification area because the gasification process is invisible and the reaction temperature exceeds 1000 degrees C. Many fracturing events that occurred due to coal heating can be captured with Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring technique during UCG. However, the temperature conditions to generate fracturing events during UCG have not yet been clarified. Therefore, the coal heating experiment and small-scale UCG experiment are conducted by measuring the temperature and AE activities in this research to examine the applicability of the AE technique instead of temperature measurement as a monitoring method during UCG. As a result, many fracturing events are generated when the temperature of coal is changed drastically, especially during coal gasification. Besides, AE events increase in the sensor near the heat source and AE sources are expanded widely with the expansion of the high-temperature region. AE monitoring is an effective technique for the estimation of the gasification area during UCG instead of temperature monitoring.

Automated summary

Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) requires monitoring of the gasification area due to its invisible nature and high reaction temperatures. This research conducted coal heating and small-scale UCG experiments to examine the applicability of Acoustic Emission (AE) technique as a monitoring method during UCG. The results showed that AE monitoring is effective in estimating the gasification area, especially during coal gasification, as it helps capture fracturing events and expands with the high-temperature region.