Adsorption behavior of carbon dioxide and methane in bituminous coal: A molecular simulation study

The adsorption behavior of CO₂, CH₄ and their mixtures in bituminous coal was investigated in this study. First, a bituminous coal model was built through molecular dynamic (MD) simulations, and it was confirmed to be reasonable by comparing the simulated results with the experimental data. Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations were then carried out to investigate the single and binary component adsorption of CO₂ and CH₄ with the built bituminous coal model. For the single component adsorption, the isosteric heat of CO₂ adsorption is greater than that of CH₄ adsorption. CO₂ also exhibits stronger electrostatic interactions with the heteroatom groups in the bituminous coal model compared with CH₄, which can account for the larger adsorption capacity of CO₂ in the bituminous coal model. In the case of binary adsorption of CO₂ and CH₄ mixtures, CO₂ exhibits the preferential adsorption compared with CH₄ under the studied conditions. The adsorption selectivity of CO₂ exhibited obvious change with increasing pressure. At lower pressure, the adsorption selectivity of CO₂ shows a rapid decrease with increasing the temperature, whereas it becomes insensitive to temperature at higher pressure. Additionally, the adsorption selectivity of CO₂ decreases gradually with the increase of the bulk CO₂ mole fraction and the depth of CO₂ injection site.