Study on difference of outburst elimination effect between sub-layers of soft coal and hard coal under the condition of gas per-drainage

The effect of drainage and outburst elimination are obviously different between soft and hard coal sub-layers under per-drainage of coal seam, and hence, the location of per-drainage borehole related to the soft sub-layer is the key that determines whether the outburst can be eliminated in whole coal seam. This paper discusses the differences between soft and hard coal from fields of pore radius distribution, pore structure, surface area and permeability, and the per-drainage effect was numerical simulated under different distance between per-drainage hole and soft sub-layer. Moreover, the optimum hole arrangement of outburst elimination is given in the paper. The result of research shows that the macro-pore with aperture that is larger than 50,000 nm, is dominant at about 50% in hard coal, correspondingly, the micro-pore with aperture less than 100 nm accounts for about 41.23% in soft coal. The surface area of soft coal is 1.6 times as that of hard coal. The residual gas content in soft coal sub-layer is obviously more than it in hard coal sub-layer under the same pre-drainage condition. To 5.5 m-thick coal seams which top is a soft coal sub-layer of 0.5 m-thick, pre-drainage gas can eliminate danger of gas outburst in whole coal seam at the seam time after 455 days drainage when the per-drainage holes are 1.0 m distances from the soft coal sub-layer.