Titrations part 1

There is usually a titration question in the AS papers that is worth quite a few marks.

Students struggle with titrations as they dont understand what is going on chemically. There is a lot of
information and it can be confusing. The maths involved is very simple, so dont think you cant do it
because of maths.

The good news is it is usually just a simple acid-base neutralisation reaction. And the calculations are very
similar to those in the moles tutorials that utilise chemical equations.

General titration explanation

The point of any titration is to allow you to calculate the number of moles of a reactant that you dont
know very much about (the unknown).

To be able to do this, you need to react the unknown with a solution of something that you do have
information on (well call this the known).

Because you know the concentration and volume of the known, you can then calculate the number of
moles of the known that have reacted with the unknown.

From there, we need to know how the known and unknown are related to each other. So you will always
need an equation and you just look at the ratios in it i.e. are the unknown and known in a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio
etc. From there you can then work out the moles of the unknown by simple multiplication or division.

your goal is to work out the number of moles of the unknown. From there you can convert to
concentration, percentage, grams or whatever they ask for in the question.

Doing the titration

Rinse the burette and conical flask with whatever solution you are going to put in them.

Burette with either

acid or alkali

Flask with solution of

either acid or alkali
 the apparatus is very simple. Just a burette and a conical flask. You can put either solution in the
burette, it doesnt really matter.

ensure that the tip of the burette is filled with solution.

Accuracy is the key to these experiments. You should use a pipette when measuring out volumes.

Add a few drops of an indicator to the conical flask. You should know methyl orange: changes colour in
pH range 2-5 from orange to red when adding acid to alkali and phenolphthalein: changes colour in pH
range 8-10 from colourless to pink when adding alkali to acid.

All you have to do is open the tap on the burette and look for a colour change, at which point the
reaction is over (the end point). Note down the volume of the known added.

You just have to be careful to add the solution slowly or you could miss the colour change and your
values will be inaccurate. Also, put a white tile under the conical flask to enable you to see the colour
more easily. Always give the flask a swirl when adding the solution from the burette to ensure that the
solutions are actually mixing.

The accuracy of the calculation that follows is determined by how well you do the titration. You should
do a rough titration first so you know what value to aim for. Then you can take your time and do it
properly.

You should repeat the titration until you get two values within 0.1cm3 of each other (concordant values).
The more times you do it, the more reliable your result will be. You take the average of these titres as
your value to use in the calculation.

Acid/base titrations

This is a simple neutralisation reaction. The end point/colour change occurs at the point of neutralisation.

Remember the equation:

Acid + Base Salt + Water

In acid/base reactions you have the choice of any indicator that you know. The two most common are
methyl orange (covers a low pH range changes from red to yellow) and phenolphthalein (covers a high pH
range, changes from colourless to pink).

Type 1

This is as straight forward as it gets for these calculations. In this question they want to know the
concentration of ethanoic acid. The equation for the reaction is:

CH3COOH + NaOH CH3COONa + H2O

25cm3 of an ethanoic acid solution was transferred to a 250cm3 flask and made up to the mark with
water. 25cm3 of this solution was then pipetted into a conical flask and titrated against NaOH. It took
28cm3 of 0.1 moldm-3 NaOH to neutralise the ethanoic acid.

Step 1: n = c x v

You are calculating the number of moles added from the burette or the number of moles of NaOH that
have reacted with the CH3COOH.

Always always ALWAYS do this first. You can get a quick mark by using n= c x v to work out the number of
moles added during the titration.

n = 0.1 x 28/1000 = 2.8 x 10-3 moles of NaOH

However, be careful. You are using the volume added from the burette. Students often just pick any
number that they see and use it!

Step 2: use the equation

This is always the 2nd step. We want to know the number of moles of CH3COOH so we need to use the
equation to see how the CH3COOH is related to the NaOH:

CH3COOH + NaOH CH3COONa + H2O

We can see that the CH3COOH:NaOH ratio is 1:1 therefore the CH3COOH moles are also:

2.8 x 10-3 moles

Step 3: look for portions

In this question they took a 25 cm3 portion from an initial 250 cm3 sample. This happens a lot but not all
the time, so you need to look for it to see if they have done it or not.

This means that they took 1/10th of the total number of moles to do the titration. So you need to
multiply by 10 to get back to the original moles.

So we do: 2.8 x 10-3 x 10 = 2.8 x 10-2 moles in 250cm3

If unsure here, always go back to the start of the question to see what you are working out. It is the
number of moles in 250cm3 you are interested in for your final answer.

Step 4: Answer the question (convert moles into something else)

The last part should be easy. Just answer the question.

What are they looking for? Are they looking for the mass in grams, a percentage, a concentration etc.

In this question, they are looking for a concentration, so you just use n = c x v again. So again, make sure
you use the correct volume. In this question it was 25cm3 of ethanoic acid:
c = n/v c = 2.8 x 10-2 /0.025 (25/1000)

= 1.12 mol dm-3