Experimental and numerical investigation on the effect of moisture on coal permeability

Coalbed methane is a kind of clean energy source and also a kind of hazardous gas threatening the safety of coal mine production. Permeability is a key parameter to evaluate gas migration capability. However, the permeability is influenced by moisture content. Here, a series of seepage experiments were conducted to analyze the development tendency of flux and permeability to reveal the impact mechanism. Experimental results show that permeability tends to be a sharp drop with increasing moisture, but it had a slight fluctuation with relative gas pressure increasing under the constant mean effective stress. Considering the effect of moisture and gas sorption, a new gas-solid coupling model was developed based on experimental results and theoretical analysis and was implemented into FEM software for simulation. The numerical results of the new gas-solid coupling model were in good accordance with the experimental results and have a priority to cube law in precision. This study reveals that, on the one hand, the moisture can influence the adsorption-induced strain and, on the other hand, it can lead to a significant decrease in porosity due to pore volume occupation.