Investigation progress of coal and dissolve methane using ionic liquids

The current researches about coalmine gas extracting improvements,ionic liquid(IL) swelling coal and ionic liquid dissolving gas were summarized.The current methods of gas extracting from low-permeability coal seams mainly include physically cracking to release methane or injecting CO2 or N2 to replace the methane,which are practically efficient.However,they are limited for desorption of methane in the coal micropores.Considering that certain ionic liquids can efficiently swell and disperse coal,and dissolve methane,we suggest a new idea to use ILs to increase pore size of coal,and simultaneously absorb methane,helpful for impelling methane to desorb from coal and increase the concentration of the extracted gas.From two aspects,swelling coal and dissolving CH4,it is confirmed that there is the research foundation in using ionic liquid to enhance the CH4 release from coal.