Modeling of material balance from the experimental UCG

Abstract

The underground coal gasification is a continually evolving technology, which converts coal to calorific gas. There are many important parameters in this technology, which are difficult to measure. These parameters include the underground cavity growth, amount gasified coal, and the leakage of input and output gaseous components into the surrounding layers during the coal gasification process. Mathematical modeling of this process is one of the possible alternatives for determining these unknown parameters. In this paper, the structure of the mathematical model of laboratory underground coal gasification process from the material balance aspect is presented. The material balance consists of mass components entering and leaving from the UCG process. The paper shows a material balance in the form of a general mass balance and atomic species balance. The material balance was testing by six UCG laboratory experiments, which were realized in two ex-situ reactors.