Correlation between coal characteristics and methane adsorption on China＇s coals

It is highly important to investigate relationship between coal characteristics and methane adsorption on coal in the fields of coalbed methane recovery. Based on data examination of coal quality indexes collected from the literatures, regression equations for Langmuir adsorption constants, VL or VLIPL, and coal quality indexes for selected coal samples were developed with multiple linear regression of SPSS software according to the degree of coal metamorphosis. The regression equations built were tested with data collected from some literatures, and the influences of coal quality indexes on CH4 adsorption on coals were studied with investigation of regression equations, and the reasons of low accuracy to Langmuir constants calculated with regression equation for a few coal samples were investigated. The results show that the regression equations can be employed to predict Langmuir constants for methane adsorption isotherms on coals obtained using volumetric gas adsorption experiments, which are conducted at 30 ℃ on a wet or dried coal samples with less than 30% ash content in coal. The influence of same coal quality index with various coal rank or influence of various coal quality indexes for same coal rank on CH4 adsorption is not consistent. The regression equations have different accuracy to different coal rank, in which the VL equations supply better prediction accuracy for anthracite and higher prediction error for lower metamorphosis coal, and the PL prediction error with VL and VL/PL equations is lower to bituminous coal and higher to anthracite.