Realizing efficient gas drainage in low permeability coal seams has always been a difficult problem for coal miners. Based on this, this paper proposes a new technology of large-diameter mechanical cave-making to promote gas extraction in a coal seam. This technology mainly uses the pressure of a water injection pump to control the automatic opening and closing of a mechanical reaming device to realize mechanical cavitation, and the hole diameter can reach up to 500 mm. The gas drainage effect of mechanical cavitation drilling is analyzed by a numerical simulation, which shows that under the condition of the same drainage time, the larger the cavitation radius is, the larger the effective influence radius of gas drainage is. According to the field test results, the time of single cave-making is about 5 min, and the speed of cave-making is fast. The coal output of a single cave is 0.42 t/m, and the pressure relief effect is obvious. Compared with ordinary drilling, the gas drainage concentration of mechanical cavitation drilling is increased by 2 times and the net amount of drainage is increased by 1.8 times. Large-diameter mechanical cavitation technology can better improve the gas drainage effect of outburst coal seams with low permeability and has a good application prospect.
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.