A simple method for solving unidirectional methane gas flow in coal seam based on similarity solution

The equation used to model the unidirectional flow of methane gas in coal seams is usually formulated as a nonlinear partial differential equation, which needs to be solved numerically with a computer program.Nevertheless, for people without access to the computer program, the conventional numerical method may be inconvenient. Thus, the objective here is to seek some method simpler than the conventional one for solving the flow problem. A commonly used model of the unidirectional methane gas flow is considered, where the methane adsorption is described by the Langmuir isotherm and the free gas is treated as real gas. By introducing the similarity solution, a simple method for solving the flow model is proposed, which can be done on a hand calculator. It is shown by two examples that the gas pressure profile obtained by the proposed method agrees well with the direct numerical solution of the flow model.