Studies of peat as the input to coalification,I. Rationale and preliminary examination of polysaccharides in peats

It is widely believed that minerals of the huminite and vitrinite groups in coals consist to an important extent of a cross-linked macromolecular network, but in spite of debate that has extended over 60 years or more, the nature of the starting materials for this network, and the manner in which it is formed, are still not satisfactorily settled, though some advances resulting from the use of cross-polarization, magic-angle spinning, ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance and pyrolysis techniques have been made recently. In a preliminary study peats in two cores from the Florida Everglades were fractionated by procedures adapted from those used in soil science. Measurements of optical rotation and viscometric molecular weights show that the plant polysaccharides are already altered in surface litter. Acid hydrolysates of whole peat and the humic acid and humin fractions gave distributions of sugars different from what is expected from plant polysaccharides; that is, hemicelluloses and α-cellulose seem to have been at least partly destroyed and various bacterial and/or fungal polysaccharides added. Better procedures for the fractionation and analysis of peat are needed.