Abstract
A reliable quantitative analytical method for oxygen containing functionalities in coal, particularly, phenolic-OH and carboxylic-OH, has been developed. This method involved a quantitative chemical reactions of these functionalities with various borohydrides in a pyridine solvent. It is well-known that coal swells in pyridine very well, and provides, so-called a coal/pyridine gel in which the mass-transportation into the matrix of the macromolecular network of coal is considered to be significantly improved. From the preliminary experiments we have learned that there seemed to be serious misevaluations of the quatities of these functionalities in coals previously reported, particularly, towards the higher rank of coal, ie., sub-bituminous and bituminous coals.
