Simultaneous determination of equivalence volumes and acid dissociation constants from potentiometric titration data

Abstract

New iterative methods for analysis of potentiometric titration data of (a) mixtures of weak monoprotic acids with their conjugate bases, (b) solutions of polyprotic (di- and triprotic) acids, and (c) mixtures of two diprotic acids are presented. These methods, using data exclusively resulting from the acidic region of the titration curve permits the accurate determination of the analytical concentration of one or more acids even if the titration is stopped well before the end point of the titration. For the titration of a solution containing a conjugate acid/base pair, the proposed procedure enables the extraction of the initial composition of the mixture, as well as the dissociation constant of the concerned acid. Thus, it is possible by this type of analysis to distinguish whether a weak acid has been contaminated by a strong base and define the extent of the contamination. On the other hand, for the titration of polyprotic acids, the proposed approach enables the extraction of the accurate values of the equivalence volume and the dissociation constants K i even when the ionization stages overlap. Finally, for the titration of a mixture of two diprotic acids the proposed procedure enables the determination of the composition of the mixture even if the sum of the concentrations of the acids is not known. This method can be used in the analysis of solutions containing two diastereoisomeric forms of a weak diprotic acid. The test of the proposed procedures by means of ideal and Monte Carlo simulated data revealed that these methods are fairly applicable even when the titration data are considerably obscured by ‘noise’ or contain an important systematic error. The proposed procedures were also successfully applied to experimental titration data.