Coal and gas outburst control using uniform hydraulic fracturing by destress blasting and water-driven gas release

Hydraulic fracturing can increase coal seam fractures and reduce gas outburst risks, but the main challenge of its implementation in coal mines is to achieve uniform fracturing and gas reduction. In this paper, we studied the mechanism of water-driven gas release through two aspects: the H2O molecule is more easily adsorbed by coal than CH4, and water can decrease the gas adsorption capacity of coal. Comparative experiments of conventional hydraulic fracturing and blasting-fracturing technologies were carried out in #8 coal mine in Pingdingshan, China. We found that fractures and water contents around the blasting-based fracturing hole were more uniform than the conventional fracturing hole. After hydraulic fracturing, low water content coal usually has high gas content, which confirmed that gas in wet areas was displaced by water and driven to dry areas. To improve the uniformity of hydraulic fracturing, we proposed the uniform fracturing technology by combining blasting-fracturing holes and control holes. Blasting before hydraulic fracturing will increase the uniformity of fracturing and water distribution, and the control holes are used to monitor and release gas driven by water injection. The effective wetting range of conventional hydraulic fracturing was from -6 to 6 m along the strike direction and from -3 to 9 m along the dip direction with 94.71 m(3) water injected. While the effective wetting range using uniform fracturing was increased to from -21 to 18 m along the strike direction and from -12 to 18 m along the dip direction with78.13 m(3) water injected. Furthermore, number of boreholes to be drilled was largely reduced from 1300 to 132 when using the uniform fracturing technology to replace the dense hole technology in a 300 m long roadway. This research has suggested that uniform fracturing can effectively reduce gas outburst risk in gassy mines in China.