Analytical Applications of Conductometric Measurements

When one ion is replaced in solution by a different ion with a significantly different eqnivalent conductivity, a change in total conductivity occurs. As seen in Table 15.4, hydrogen ion and hydroxide ion have the highest equivalent conductivities replacing them with less conductive ions can form the basis of conductimetric titrations for acids and bases. For example, when NaOH is added to HCl, the following reaction occurs  

Conductivity is used to determine the purity of drinking water and other natural waters and wastewaters. Dedicated instruments for this purpose, including handheld, portable meters, are often calibrated to read in total dissolved solids or TDS or in salinity. These tell the 

In addition to drinking water and environmental applications, water purity is critical to many industries. Conductivity detectors are used in semiconductor and chip fabrication plants, to monitor cleanliness of pipelines in the food and beverage industry, to monitor incoming water for boilers to prevent scale buildup and corrosion. Any process stream with ions in it can be analyzed by conductometry. Conductivity detectors are part of commercial laboratory D1 water systems, to indicate the purity of the water produced and to alert the chemist when the ion-exchange cartridges are exhausted. The detector usually reads out in resistivity theoretically, completely pure water has a resistivity of 18 MQ cm. 

Conductivity detectors are widely used in 1C instruments using eluent suppression detection. The detectors are inexpensive, simple, rugged, and easy to miniaturize. The same type of detectors can be used for any chromatographic process to detect charged species in a nonionic eluent. 

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