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In order to supply benefits for safe production of coal underground and efficient exploitation of coalbed methane, a self‐developed gas seepage experimental device considering gas adsorption and desorption was proposed to study the seepage properties of gas‐saturated coal in this paper. A series of gas seepage experiments under different loading conditions were carried out to investigate the change rules of permeability of gas‐saturated coal. The experimental results covered the significant effects of confining pressure, gas pressure, temperature change, creep stress, and complete stress‐strain process on the seepage laws of gas‐saturated coal. The experimental results showed that the permeability of gas‐saturated coal is strongly sensitive to the effective stress and decreases with the increase of the effective stress. Under the fixed confining pressure, the permeability of gas‐saturated coal showed an obvious Klinkenberg effect, but the Klinkenberg effect would no longer be evident once the gas pressure was larger than 1.0 MPa. And the change law of permeability of gas‐saturated coal with temperature was mainly reflected in the comprehensive effect of thermal stress and effective stress on the control of pore deformation. Under the complete stress‐strain loading conditions, the change rules of permeability were mainly dependent on the failure mode of gas‐saturated coal. And the change rules of permeability, for the condition of triaxial creep stress, were relied on the stage of creep deformation. The deformation at decay creep stage was responsible for a steady permeability after the failure of gas‐saturated coal, while the deformation at nondecay creep stage was responsible for a rapid increase of permeability after the failure of gas‐saturated coal. The results in this work can offer some helpful suggestions for efficiently exploring coalbed methane in the future.

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To understand the effects of thermal shock on microcrack propagation and permeability in coal, thermal shock tests were conducted on coal specimens by using a constant temperature drying oven (105˚C) and a SLX program controlled cryogenic tank. The growth and propagation of microcracks were measured with computer tomography (CT) scanning and scanning electron microscope (SEM) tests. Results showed that thermal shocks improved the permeability of coal significantly. Notably, the permeability of coal after thermal shocks increased from 211.31% to 368.99% and was positively correlated with temperature difference. CT scanning images revealed that thermal shocks increased the crack number, crack volume and crack width as well as smoothened and widened the gas flow paths, thereby enhancing coal permeability. Moreover, SEM images showed that heating-cooling shocks created more new microcracks, forming more complex crack propagation paths and better connectivity among microcracks in coal compared to cooling shocks. We proposed a crack propagation criterion for coal to explain the mechanism of crack failure and propagation during thermal shocks. Our experiment results and theoretical analysis indicate that the heating-cooling shock is more effective in damaging and breaking coal than the cooling shock. Thus, it can be used as an alternative approach to enhance coal permeability in the production of coalbed methane (CBM).