Underground Coal Gasification Program

CAVSIM is a three-dimensional, axisymmetric model for resource recovery and cavity growth during underground coal gasification (UCG). CAVSIM is capable of following the evolution of the cavity from near startup to exhaustion, and couples explicitly wall and roof surface growth to material and energy balances in the underlying rubble zones. Growth mechanisms are allowed to change smoothly as the system evolves from a small, relatively empty cavity low in the coal seam to a large, almost completely rubble-filled cavity extending high into the overburden rock. The model is applicable to nonswelling coals of arbitrary seam thickness and can handle a variety of gas injection flow schedules or compositions. Water influx from the coal aquifer is calculated by a gravity drainage-permeation submodel which is integrated into the general solution. The cavity is considered to consist of up to three distinct rubble zones and a void space at the top. Resistance to gas flow injected from a stationary source at the cavity floor is assumed to be concentrated in the ash pile, which builds up around the source, and also the overburden rubble which accumulates on top of this ash once overburden rock is exposed at the cavity top. Char rubble zones at the cavity side and edges are assumed to be highly permeable. Flow of injected gas through the ash to char rubble piles and the void space is coupled by material and energy balances to cavity growth at the rubble/coal, void/coal and void/rock interfaces. One preprocessor and two postprocessor programs are included - SPALL calculates one-dimensional mean spalling rates of coal or rock surfaces exposed to high temperatures and generates CAVSIM input: TAB reads CAVSIM binary output files and generates ASCII tables of selected data for display; and PLOT produces dot matrix printer or HP printer plots from TAB output.