Assessment of Heating and Cooling of a Spontaneous Fire Source in Coal Deposits—Effect of Coal Grain Size

Fire hazard assessment in coal mines is performed on the basis of concentrations of particular gases emitted from the heating coal deposit, but more precise criteria and indicators are needed to assess fire hazard properly—both during the temperature rise phase and in the coal bed cooling phase. In the paper the impact of coal grinding on hazard assessment of spontaneous fire development in the coal deposit during heating and cooling the fire source was analyzed. The intensity of desorption of ethane, ethylene, propane, propylene, acetylene, carbon monoxide and hydrogen is the resultant of temperature and grinding of coal samples. The results proved that the ratio of concentrations emitted by standard versus coarsely crushed coal for each of the gases, changed both in the growth phase as well as in the temperature drop phase. It was found that as the temperature rose, the effect of coal grinding on the release of ethane, ethylene, propane, propylene and carbon monoxide decreased. The greatest effect of coal grinding was observed in the case of ethane and propane, while the lowest in the case of hydrogen and carbon monoxide.