Causes, Monitoring, Extinction, and Eco-environmental Impacts of Underground Coal Fires: A Comprehensive Perspective

Underground coal fire (UCF) is a disaster associated with coal mining activities which occurs in almost all main coal-producing countries. UCF not only burns up massive coal resource, but also causes damages and pollutions to local eco-environment, such as the land subsidence, the contamination to soil and nearby water resource, the pollution to air, and so on. In this presentation, the author attempts to illustrate a comprehensive understanding to UCF from micro and macro perspectives, including the mechanism of UCF occurrence and propagation, the monitoring and early warning of UCF, the efficient advanced materials depressed the UCF and the UCF’s impact on local eco-environment, which is helpful to understanding well of UCF. Methods and technologies which were employed in this study include analyses of the remote sensing data, the TG data, the C¹³- NMR data, the HRTEM data, the FTIR data, the XRD and XPS data, etc. Necessary models for quantifying UCF occurrence and propagation were established by analyzing the process of UCF. And a novel method was proposed by analyzing the distribution of surface temperature coupled with the NDVI data and InSar data. Some inhibitors were used in this study to depress the proceeds of coal oxidation which is useful to control the UCF. In addition, considering the UCF’s impacts on local eco-environment, coal-fire-induced heavy metal contamination to soil also were investigated which show that the heat effect is a major factor influences the distribution of heavy metal. Finally, strategies were suggested to carry out the restoration of UCF sites after it was extinguished.

Keywords: Underground Coal Fire; Mechanism of Occurring and Propagating; Remote Sensing; Inhibitor; Eco-environment Impact