Development and Application of Water Sealing Technology for Gas Drainage Boreholes

[Image: see text] The poor sealing effect of gas extraction boreholes causes low efficiency of gas extraction. As a consequence, the requirements of coal mine safety production are often not attained. The sealing effect of boreholes depends not only on the sealing material itself but also on the combination degree between the material and the hole wall and the structural change characteristics of the material during operation. Our theoretical analysis shows that the amount of liquid leakage increases with the gap width Δh in a cubic law, decreases with the sealing hole viscosity in a hyperbolic form, increases linearly with the diameter of the borehole, and increases with the eccentricity in a quadratic function. We have developed a PD sealing material that has good compactness and sealing effects, excellent water retention performance, and an expansion rate of 1.29. The material can generate secondary expansion through microscopic development, which is beneficial to improve the quality of the sealing hole. HV-CMC has good stability in plugging mucus. In addition, the manual pump has been redeveloped to be portable and also to overcome the blockage of the suction valve of the original device. In addition, the auxiliary device for drilling and sealing has been invented. The field application demonstrates that the gas concentration and flow pressure difference of the new sealing borehole can be maintained at a high level in a short period of time and then decrease slowly with time. The resulting improved sealing effect demonstrates that our new approach has important theoretical and practical significance for mine gas drainage.