Progress and Prospects of Foam-Based Materials for Mine Fire Prevention and Extinguishing: A Review

Abstract Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) poses a major safety hazard in underground coal mines, particularly in deep mining, where the coupling of high geotemperature, high in situ stress, high gas content, and intense mining-induced disturbances leads to high concealment and complex disaster evolution. Conventional fire prevention and extinguishing technologies suffer from limited fracture penetration, inadequate coverage, and poor long-term effectiveness. Foam-based fire prevention and extinguishing materials, with their superior diffusivity, permeability, accumulation coverage, and solidified load-bearing capacity, offer unique advantages in sealing air-leakage fractures, covering extensive residual coal, and controlling high-level fire sources, making them a key technological direction for coal fire control in deep mines. This review summarizes recent advances and development trends in mine foam-based fire prevention and extinguishing technologies. It clarifies the multiple synergistic mechanisms, including absorption cooling, isolation oxygen, inhibition, and fissure sealing. It also systematically categorizes the formation mechanisms, material compositions, fire-extinguishing characteristics, and application scenarios of two-phase foams, inhibition foams, three-phase foams, gel foams, organic solidified foams, and inorganic solidified foams. With respect to deep mining environments, this review highlights critical scientific issues, including foam stability degradation at elevated temperatures, sealing failure under high stress and intense mining-induced disturbances, and the explosion-suppression mechanism of foams under the coexistence of high gas and CSC. Future developments should prioritize multifunctional foam materials featuring high-temperature resistance, self-gas-generation, and self-healing capabilities, alongside advances in in-situ foaming, intelligent sensing, and precise injection equipment. Furthermore, integrating digital twin and artificial intelligence technologies could enable an intelligent foam fire prevention and extinguishing system that incorporates environmental perception, data fusion, disaster prediction, and adaptive control. This review aims to provide a theoretical basis and technical guidance for the development of foam-based fire prevention materials, the prevention and control of CSC disasters, and their engineering applications.