Simulation and Optimization of Underground Coal Gasification

Hossein Nourozieh, Mohammad Kariznovi
Supervisor: Zhangxing (John) Chen

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Abstract

The underground coal gasification (UCG) is modeled by systematically considering the geology including geological structure, coal and parting layering, porosity and permeability variation and thermal properties of layers, chemical process including evaporation, pyrolysis, char reactions, reaction modeling and effective parameters, fluid flow equations and geomechanics.

Small (20x10x9), Intermediate (30x19x18), Field scale (200x99x18) model are simulated. We evaluate different parameters in small model, and choose the best parameters to set in intermediate or field scale. The computational procedure for grid optimization of the simulator is presented. Some challenges of chemical reactions, pyrolysis and simulation are proposed. The future works include field scale simulation, kinetic parameter estimation and optimization, sensitivity analysis, defining an optimum operational condition for field scale and improving model based on field data.