Substantiation of Drilling Parameters for Undermined Drainage Boreholes for Increasing Methane Production from Unconventional Coal-Gas Collectors

Abstract

Decarbonization of the mining industry on the basis of closing the energy generation, on the basis of cogeneration of coal mine methane, and on the internal consumption of the mine is a promising direction in ensuring sustainable development. Known problems of deep underground mining do not allow for realizing the potential of man-made gas reservoirs due to the deterioration of the conditions of development of reserves of georesources. The aim of the work was to improve recommendations for the substantiation of drilling parameters for undermined drainage boreholes for increasing methane production from unconventional coal-gas collectors. The authors’ approach innovation lies in the possibility of using the established patterns of better natural stability of undermined boreholes to optimize them as spatial orientation parameters in an existing drilling passport for the improvement of methane extraction productivity. For this purpose, smoothing (LOESS) of the experimental data of two similar types of wells was used; then deterministic interpolation methods in combination with a three-dimensional representation of the response function in “gnuplot” were used. As a result, it was found that the increase in the inclination angle from 40° to 60° leads to a significant transformation of the model of the studied process, accompanied by a decline in the dynamics of methane emission and a decrease in the distance of the productive work zone of this type of well from 13 to 5 m before the roof landing, which then is replaced by a sharp increase in the productive work zone up to 35 m ahead of the longwall face. This allows under specific conditions for recommending increasing the productivity of methane capex from technogenic disturbed coal-gas reservoir replacement of wells with a smaller angle of rise to the transition to a more frequent grid of clusters from wells #4.

Keywords

• coalbed methane
• longwall
• gas flow modeling
• mining industry decarbonization