Categorical modeling on electrical anomaly of room-and-pillar coal mine fires and application for field electrical resistivity tomography

In order to improve the accuracy of fire area delineation in coalfield with electrical prospecting, the categorical geoelectric models of coal fires are established according to geological and mining conditions. The room-and-pillar coal mine fires are divided into three types which are coal seam fire, goaf fire and subsidence area fire, respectively, and forward electrical simulations and inversion analysis of each type of coal fire are implemented. Simulation results show that the resistance anomalies of goaf fires exist around one and a half to two times higher than background field, in contrast, coal seam and subsidence area fires performance low resistivity response which are roughly half to two-third of background field resistivity, respectively. Identification of different fire types and delineation of coal fire areas are further presented. The inversion results which are validated by borehole survey prove that the presented method could eliminate the omission of coal fires with high resistance anomaly and provide a novel reference for fire extinguishing in the future.