Study on Coal's Spontaneous Combustion Propensity based on the Correlation between Oxygen Consumption and Heat Generation

The fundamental reason for coal's spontaneous combustion is that the amount of generated heat by oxidation exceeds that of heat dissipated. Therefore, the generated heat by oxidation and the amount of consumed oxygen are major indexes to evaluate coal's spontaneous combustion propensity (CSCP). In this study, a method to simultaneously measure the consumed oxygen and generated heat was established by using constant temperature difference guiding method. On this basis, the relationship between the oxygen consumption and heat generation during low-temperature oxidation of four types of coal from six mines was studied. It was found that this method can quickly and efficiently obtain oxygen consumption and heat generation of coal during the low-temperature oxidation. The results reveal that the oxygen consumption of all the test samples are positively and linearly correlated with their heat generation. On this basis, with the aid of the oxygen consumption (to replace the heat generation), a theoretical basis for judging CSCP was obtained, which supports the identification of CSCP based on oxygen consumption.