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Mapping of Stress Sensitivity Affected by Water Variation to Microscopic Pore Distributions in Medium- and High-Rank Coals

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Abstract

The stress sensitivity and compressibility of the pore system in coal greatly influence the coal permeability and porosity, which are important to coalbed methane development, while water transformation under stress and drying process is essential to obtain insights into water interference on pore structure. In this study, microscopic pore distributions obtained by different test methods are compared, and the stress sensitivity and compressibility of micropore-transition pores and mesopore-macropores, and the water migration under different saturations are investigated by nuclear magnetic resonance of cores of four different rank coals. According to the combined results of low-pressure N2 adsorption and mercury intrusion porosimetry, the distribution of T2 spectra was in good agreement with the pore size distribution, which was dominated by micropores and transition pores (MI-T pores). The stress sensitivity of mesopores and macropores (ME-MA pores) in the completely water-saturated middle-rank coal samples was higher than that of the high-rank coal samples. ME-MA pores, featuring more complex heterogeneity than the whole pore system, provided more compression space but the compressibility varied significantly among different ranks of coal samples due to the low proportion of ME-MA pores. Besides, the pore space after compression could not be restored to its original state. Different ranks of coal cores varied in the relationships among stress sensitivity, compressibility, and heterogeneity. During the drying process, coal water tended be first evaporated from coal evaporation surface, smooth micro-fractures, open macropores and large particle voids.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41872170), the National Major Science and Technology Project of China (2016ZX05044), Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2020CXNL11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Coalbed Methane Resources and Reservoir Formation Process, Ministry of Education, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221008, People’s Republic of China

    Shasha Zhang, Caifang Wu, Xiaojie Fang, Ningning Liu, Xiuming Jiang & Jiang Han

  2. School of Resources and Earth Science, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221116, People’s Republic of China

    Shasha Zhang, Caifang Wu, Xiaojie Fang, Ningning Liu, Xiuming Jiang & Jiang Han

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  1. Shasha Zhang
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  2. Caifang Wu
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  3. Xiaojie Fang
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  4. Ningning Liu
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Contributions

Conceptualization: SZ, CW; Methodology: SZ, XF, JH; Formal analysis and investigation: SZ; NL, XJ; Writing – original draft preparation: SZ; Writing – review and editing: SZ; CW; Funding acquisition: CW; Resources: SZ; Supervision: CW.

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Correspondence to Caifang Wu.

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Zhang, S., Wu, C., Fang, X. et al. Mapping of Stress Sensitivity Affected by Water Variation to Microscopic Pore Distributions in Medium- and High-Rank Coals. Nat Resour Res 31, 1601–1619 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-022-10037-8

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