A Thermogravimetric Approach to the Classification of Organic Soils

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The thermogravimetric method is shown to offer a simple but valid and meaningful method for assessing the degree of humification of organic soils. Heights of the 280C maxima in the differential thermogravimetric (DTG) curves of 22 organic soil samples, ranging from peats, mucky peats, peaty mucks to mucks, were inversely proportional to the degree of humification as determined by pyrophosphate solubility. Highly significant negative correlations were found between peak height at 280C and (i) solubility in 0.025m sodium pyrophosphate solution, (ii) percent ash, and (iii) percent moisture. The analytical data were fitted by the method of least squares to polynomials of various degrees on an IBM 1620 computer. The thermogravimetric technique offers a new approach to the classification of organic soils and should also find wide application in humification studies.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: