Experimental and molecular dynamics study into the surfactant effect upon coal wettability

In order to improve the wettability and permeability of coal seams, the water injection efficiency of coal seams has to be boosted, the amount of dust generation has to be reduced, and coal and gas outburst must be prevented, and a surfactant is used to modulate the coal surface wettability. In this work, taking coal samples from Pingdingshan mine in Henan as the research object, their surface chemistry was initially scrutinized and then coal surface engineering via surfactants was inspected by a contact angle test. The coal wettability was ameliorated with surfactants, particularly using the 1 wt% non-ionic surfactant Triton X-100, which elicited a 47% lower contact angle than the raw coal. The surface free energy of the coal sample modified by 1.0 wt% Triton X-100 was increased from 44.51 mN m(−1) to 49.52 mN m(−1). The microstructural characteristics of coal samples allowed leveraging the Wiser model to construct three kinds of surfactant-coal adsorption models to dissect the adsorption configuration of the system. The results indicate that the addition of surfactants increases both the interaction of water with the coal and the diffusion coefficient of water molecules, resulting in the coal surface transformation from hydrophobicity to hydrophilicity. Our current work can provide salutary guidance and reference for coal water injection and dust suppression.