346 PER FLODIN AND RARE ASPBERG 



mented, and the fines remaining in the supernate was removed by decanta- 

 tion. It was then packed into a glass column with the dimensions 4-5 by 

 150 cm. The packing procedure was that described by Flodin [6]. When 

 all the material (300 g.) had packed, a filter paper was put on top of the 

 bed. The height of the bed was 126 cm. and its volume 2000 ml. 



By passing a zone of indian ink through the bed the void space was 

 determined and found to be 515 ml. and simultaneously a check of the 

 packing was obtained. 



The oligosaccharide mixture was obtained by acetolysis of cellulose 

 followed by hydrolysis as described by Whittaker [2]. The product was 

 extracted with water and the solution obtained contained about 10% 

 oligosaccharides. 20 ml. were applied to the column and eluted with water 



4,000 - 



?, 3,000 



§ 2,000 



1,000 



600 



Fig. I. Elution curve for a cellodextrin mixture. Numbers above the peak 

 indicate the degree of polymerization. 



at a rate of 30 ml. per hour. The efiluent was collected in 10 ml. fractions 

 and the concentrations were measured in a Rayleigh interferometer. The 

 resulting curve is shown in Fig. i. The numbers above the peaks indicate 

 the degree of polymerization. 



The material in each peak was identified by paper chromatography. 

 The cellohexaose, cellopentaose, cellotetraose and cellotriose peaks from 

 three almost identical experiments were pooled, dried by lyophilization 

 and crystallized twice from water-ethanol solvents. The molecular weight 

 was determined with the sodium borohydride-anthrone method of Peat 

 et al. [7] (Table I). 



The specific optical rotations were difficult to measure with sufficient 

 accuracy for the higher cellodextrines because of the limited amounts 

 available and their low solubility. The results obtained (Table I) are of 

 the same order of magnitude as those given in the literature. 



