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Accurately determining the height of the gas-guiding fracture zone in the overlying strata of the goaf is the key to find the height of the long horizontal borehole in the roof. In order to determine the height, in this study we chose the 6306 working face of Tangkou Coal Mine in China as a research example and used both the theoretical model and discrete element method (DEM) numerical simulation to find the height of the gas-guiding fracture zone and applied the height to drill a long horizontal borehole in the roof of the 6303 working face. Furthermore, the borehole was utilized to deep into the roof for coalbed methane drainage and the results were compared with conventional gas drainage measures from other aspects. The height of the gas-guiding fracture zone was found to be 48.57 m in theoretical model based on the bulk coefficient and the void ratio and to be 51.19 m in the DEM numerical simulation according to the temporal and spatial variation characteristics of porosity. Taking both the results of theoretical analysis and numerical simulation into consideration, we determined that gas-guiding fracture zone is 49.88 m high and applied it to drill a long horizontal borehole deep into the roof in the 6303 working face field. Compared with conventional gas drainage measures, we found that the long horizontal borehole has the high stability, high efficiency and strong adaptability for methane drainage.

Oil shale is a kind of high-combustion heat mineral, and its oxidation in mining and storage are worth studying. To investigate the low-temperature oxidation characteristics of oil shale, the temperature, CO, alkane and alkene gases were analyzed using a temperature-programmed device. The results showed that the temperature of oil shale underwent three oxidation stages, namely a slow low-temperature oxidation stage, a rapid temperature-increasing oxidation stage, and a steady temperature-increasing stage. The higher the air supply rate is, the higher the crossing point temperature is. Similar to coal, CO also underwent three stages, namely a slow low-temperature oxidation stage, a rapid oxidation stage, and a steady increase stage. However, unlike coal, alkane and alkene gases produced by oil shale underwent four stages. They all had a concentration reduction stage with the maximum drop of 24.20%. Statistical classification of inflection temperature of various gases as their concentrations change showed that the temperature of 140 °C is the key temperature for group reactions, and above the temperature of 140 °C, all alkane and alkene gases underwent the rapid concentration increase stage.

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