Just published: Quantitative differentiation of coal, char and soil organic matter in an Australian coal minesoil

Happy to announce the publication of:

Chan, J., Plante, A.F., Peltre, C. et al. (2016) Quantitative differentiation of coal, char and soil organic matter in an Australian coal minesoil Thermochimica Acta (2017). doi:10.1016/j.tca.2017.02.006. This project was initiated by Jaclyn Chan, a PhD student at the University of Queensland, Sustainable Minerals Institute, Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation, in Australia. Her interest was in being able to distinguish between legacy coal carbon and the soil organic matter that was accumulating after the reclamation of coalmine soils. Because soil organic matter and coal combust at different temperatures, we used ramped combustion and thermal analysis techniques to distinguish the two pools of organic carbon. The problem is made more complicated by the fact that many coalmine soils also contain pyrogenic carbon (char) from brush fires. We need an advanced statistical method (multivariate curve resolution–alternate least squares, MCR-ALS) to be able to distinguish the combustion patterns of the three pools. The method was robust in the samples tested, and found that coal-derived carbon contributed around 20% of the total organic carbon.