The coalbed methane (CBM) desorption area is highly important in the placement of wells to produce an adequate working system. This paper develops a homogeneous seepage model of CBM that incorporates desorption and uses a finite-element method to obtain the pressure field in complex boundary cases influenced by adjacent wells. The pressure field is presented in a 2D and pseudo-3D form that visually demonstrates the shape of the pressure profile and the pressure expansion. A method of combined numerical computation and contour drawing technology is used to determine the CBM desorption area and pressure drop region. By analyzing the main factors that affect the CBM desorption region, we demonstrate that a higher value of critical desorption pressure yields a larger desorption area of the seam. The effect of the permeability is different from the value of the critical desorption. This effect is determined by the critical desorption pressure level and the intersection of pressure profiles with different permeabilities. Permeability anisotropy leads to a desorption area with an elliptical shape. We also demonstrate that a greater flux of methane will result in a greater desorption region, and the effects of the distance between wells and the desorption area are closely related to the permeability. The developed model is applied in a field case to predict the desorption area.

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding by the project (Grant No. 51404232) sponsored by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the National Science and Technology Major Project (Grant No. 2011ZX05038003) and the project (Grant No. 2014M561074) by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.