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METHANE PRODUCTION SIMULATION FROM ABANDONED MINES

Ziel

The main objectives of this project is to demonstrate and validate the functionality of METSIM, a coupled multi-media methane flow simulator and a rock mechanics model developed at Imperial College, as a tool for abandoned mine gas production planning and design, at Saarberg. As an industry, Saarberg is committed to the production of high purity (>90%) natural gas from abandoned mines. At the moment, a software tool for such purposes is not available to the industry.
The project is innovative in the way it combines reservoir engineering, geotechnical engineering and mining engineering principles under a multidisciplinary umbrella to characterise the gas resource, to predict the gas release potential of the distributed coal seams within the zone of influence of old workings and to access and optimise the volume and purity of methane that can be extracted, in the long term, from abandoned coal mines.
Based on the technology proposed, the additional gas production from the abandoned coal mines in the Saar Basin would be between 10 to 40*10exp9 m³ gas. This represents a saving of 1 to 4*10exp9 ECU in natural resources in the Saar Basin alone.

World coal resources are estimated at 25000 billion tonnes, and, the world-wide coal seam natural gas resource is estimated as 84-262 trillion cubic metres. This constitues a significant source of energy and, when utilised, the benefits of exploiting coalbed methane are twofold; the first being the prevention of the undesirable venting of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the second benefit being the economical spin-off through the generation of power due to former mining activity, the coal bearing strata surrounding an abandoned coal mine constitutes a naturally fractured, naturally stimulated reservoir with up to 80% of the original gas resource being available for subsequent extraction and utilisation. Although there are a number of historical examples of natural gas production from old coal mines, none of these operations use an industry standard predictive simulator that has been validated in the field. In actual fact, no industry standard and validated software exists at the moment. The main objective of this project is to demonstrate and validate the functionality of METSIM as an abandoned coal mine reservoir simulator for this purpose. The innovative aspects of the project include :
- treatment of the mining and natural gas production stages as the inseparable components of the whole as part of the reservoir management process. If successfully demonstrated, the methodology proposed includes both geotechnical and flow characterisation of coalbeds and transfers rock mechanical properties to the reservoir engineering models.
- for the first time, such a project involves concurrent experimentation, field monitoring and stimulator validation in abandoned mine reservoirs to enable accurate characterization of the natural gas reservoir properties for conceptual model development and to define the boundary conditions.

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IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE
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