Abstract
Four cores of peat from the Florida Everglades and one from the Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia, have been studied to clarify the roles of plant polymers as input to coalification. Curie-point pyrolysis/mass spectrometry with multivariate statistical analyses, supplemented by Py/GC and Py/GC/MS, revealed differences in chemistry between peats derived from different types of plants. Some α-cellulose is present in the upper levels of the peats, but the polysaccharide content decreases markedly with depth. Pyrolysis products contain many phenolic structures related to lignin monomers, the distribution of which changes with depth and in peat fractions of different particle size. The nature of the source vegetation, the depth of burial and the degree of disaggregation of plant material are influential in determining the chemical components of peat. The results demonstrate that the pyrolysis techniques are indeed valuable means of studying structural features of peats.