Effects of inert gas CO2/N2 injection on coal low-temperature oxidation characteristic: Experiments and simulations

To deeply understand the mechanism of inert gases in inhibiting coal spontaneous combustion, the effects of dry air, CO₂, and N₂ on coal spontaneous combustion were analyzed experimentally. To this end, bituminous coal prepared from Dongrong No. 2 Coal Mine was considered the research object. Based on the adsorption configuration of the oxygen-containing coal, the displacement behavior of O₂ by CO₂ /N₂ was studied using the grand canonical Monte-Carlo (GCMC) and molecular dynamics (MD) methods. The obtained results show that the injection of CO₂ and N₂ reduces the ability of spontaneous combustion of coal. It is found that among the studied gases, CO₂ has a stronger inhibition effect on coal spontaneous combustion, which increases the temperature of CO occurrence by 5℃, decreases the concentration of CO by 29.91%, and inhibits low-temperature oxidation of coal. From the microscopic point of view, CO₂ /N₂ gases can effectively displace O₂ by diffusion and occupying adsorption sites. It is found that after the injection of CO₂, the concentration of O₂ molecules increases significantly in the vacuum layer. Compared with N₂, injection of CO₂ increases the diffusion activation of O₂ by 5.89%. This indicates that the injection of an inert gas significantly reduces the oxygen absorption capacity of coal, thereby decreasing the coal-oxygen combination reaction and preventing the spontaneous combustion of coal. The performed analyses demonstrate that CO₂ outperforms N₂ in restraining the spontaneous combustion of coal.