Research on the Optimization for Acidification Modification Scheme Considering Coal’s Wettability Based on the AHP–TOPSIS Method

[Image: see text] Acidification technology is an important measure for enhancing the extraction of coalbed methane from seams with low permeability and abundant minerals, and the acidification scheme is the key to the success of acidification treatment. To determine the optimal acidification modification scheme, an improved AHP–TOPSIS method is proposed to decide on the optimal conditions for wettability modification. This method constructs an evaluation index system, taking the wettability of coal as the target layer and the pro/hydrophobic functional groups in coal as the index layer. Meanwhile, it innovatively takes the adsorption energy of each functional group when absorbing a single water molecule as the basis for assigning weights to the evaluation indexes. Then, nine acidification modification schemes are evaluated and selected by the improved AHP–TOPSIS method based on the test results of different schemes to get the optimal one. The optimal scheme selected by the AHP–TOPSIS method is validated by water adsorption tests and isothermal adsorption tests. The results showed that the significance of each evaluation index is ranked as follows: aromatic structures > hydroxyl groups > aliphatic functional groups > oxygen-containing functional groups. The optimal acidification modification scheme is selected by the AHP–TOPSIS method with a HF concentration of 4% and a reaction time of 6 h. The ranking of acidification modification schemes obtained by the AHP–TOPSIS method is in high agreement with the ranking of water adsorption tests. When compared with raw coal, the coal samples treated with the optimal scheme have lower adsorption capacity for gas, which indicates that the aforementioned method could be used to evaluate and select the optimal acidification modification scheme, and the selected optimal scheme has the potential to increase the output of coalbed methane.