Acid potentiometric method, case study

To conduct meaningful mechanistic and kinetic studies in alcohol media reliable and simple measurement and control of the solution jjpH is essential. Potentiometric titration is the method of choice for obtaining acid dissociation constants or metal ion complex stability constants and in favorable cases the speciation of mixtures of metal-ion-containing complexes in solution can be proposed.20 Titrations in non-aqueous solvents are not nearly as widely reported as those in aqueous media, particularly in cases with metal ions21 and determination of pH in a non-aqueous solvent referenced to that solvent is complicated due to the lack of a way to relate the electrode EMF readings to absolute jjpH (see footnote and ref. 6) so non-aqueous solvents are generally inconvenient to use22 for detailed studies of reaction mechanisms where pH control is required. 

In the mass titration method, the PZC is determined as the natnral pH of a concentrated dispersion. A detailed description of the experimental procedure can be found in [667], Mass titration become popular in the late 1980s [668,669], but the same method was already known in the 1960s as the pH drift method [183], Usually, a series of natural pH values of dispersions with increasing solid loads is reported, but only the natural pH of the most concentrated dispersion is actually used. The only role of the data points obtained at lower solid loads is to confirm that a plateau was reached in pH as a function of solid load that is, a further increase in the solid load is unlikely to bring about a change in pH. The mass titration method is based on the assumption that the solid does not contain acid, base, or other surface-active impurities. This is seldom the case, thus mass titration often produces erroneous PZCs. In this respect mass titration is similar to the potentiometric titration without correction illustrated in Figure 2.7, only the solid-to-liquid ratio is different. The experimental conditions in mass titration (solid-to-liquid ratio, time of equilibration, nature and concentration of electrolyte, and initial pH) can vary, but little attention has been paid to the possible effects of experimental conditions on the apparent PZC. The effect of an acid or base associated with solid particles on the course of mass titration was studied in [670], To this end, a series of artificially contaminated samples was prepared by the addition of an acid or base to a commercial powder. The apparent PZC of silicon nitride obtained in [671] by mass titration varied from 4.2 (extrapolated to zero time of equilibration) to 8.2 for time of equilibration longer than 20 days. The method termed mass titration was used in [672], but it was different from the method discussed above. 

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