ION EXCHANGE IN PEAT ON SPONTANEOUS HEATING.

It has been shown previously that when it undergoes spontaneous heating in stacks the organic matter of peat is subject to oxidative degradation with the formation of new compounds, including carboxylic acids (up to 4%). The hypothesis has been put forward that the acids formed especially acids with a high dissociation constant, will enter into interaction with the organomineral fraction of the peat - the humates. To confirm this hypothesis, investigations have been performed by differential thermal analysis on a FRU-64 thermograph (modified Kurnakov pyrometer). The proposed method has enabled the role of the mineral substances of peat during thermal transformations to be investigated. In this paper results are presented which established the phenomenon of ion exchange in peat on its spontaneous heating during storage.