The use of BEM in the cavity growth calculation of an underground gasifier at great depth

A numerical model for the simulation of Underground Coal Gasifier cavity growth at great depth has been developed. The model is based on the coupling of the Boundary Element Method (BEM) for Darcy flow and the numerical solution of mass and energy balances of an heterogeneous chemical reactor. The BEM is a particularly well suited method to solve the problem, because it focuses on phenomena occuring at movable boundaries where a non-uniform Neumann condition is determined by chemical reactions.