A Case Study of Direct Current Resistivity Method for Disaster Water Source Detection in Coal Mining

Abstract

Disaster water sources in underground coal seam always danger mining safety. The current electromagnetic methods are not effective to detect the disaster water sources in the underground due to noise interference generated by large metal equipment. To address this problem, the direct current resistivity method is proposed to detect the disaster water sources in the underground coal seams. The relationship between the resistivity distribution and water faults was investigated, and we found that a low resistivity distribution indicates a disaster water source. To verify the proposed method, both numerical simulations and field test have been carried out and the analysis results show that the low resistivity distribution can be used to correctly detect the disaster water sources. Most importantly, the proposed method has detected three threats of mine water disaster in the field test in a real coal seam in Lan County coal mine, China. As a result, the present work provides an important and solid support to coal mining safety.