A program for evaluating equilibrium constants from spectrophotometric data by non-linear regression analysis

A new program, CFTSP, is described for computing stability constants and molar absorptivities from data on the absorbances of mixtures of a metal ion with a ligand. It is written in FORTRAN 77, can run on personal computers, and has facilities for interactive data analysis and presentation that ease the operator's task in searching for the equilibrium model that best fits the experimental data. A critical evaluation of the performance of the program is presented, and some general criteria for selecting equilibrium parameters, making use of both synthetic and experimental data, are described.