Effects of pore size, water content, and oxygen-containing functional groups on oxygen adsorption in bituminous coal

To further explore the mechanism of coal spontaneous combustion and better grasp the laws of spontaneous combustion, this article studied the adsorption behavior of O₂ in coal. Materials studio software was applied to study the adsorption of oxygen under different water content, different pore sizes, and different oxygen-containing functional groups by means of grand canonical Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulation methods. The results show that the adsorption capacity of O₂ decreases with the increase in water content. With the increase of molecular pore size of coal, the adsorption capacity of O₂ increases, and the tight adsorption amounts decrease. The equivalent adsorption heat is less than 42 kJ/mol, indicating that the adsorption of O₂ in coal pores is physical adsorption. The smaller the physical adsorption energy and charge transfer value of the hydroxyl group for O₂, it indicates that the hydroxyl group is the active group for the physical adsorption of O₂.