A simple method for the titration of multicomponent acid-base mixtures

A titration method has been developed to analyze acid mixtures, in which the pK values differed by 0.5 to 1 pH units. Instead of the use of equivalence points a buffer capacity curve is numerically derived from the titration curve resulting in a presentation similar to chromatograms and spectra. The consumption of the NaOH titrant is determined within pH intervals of 0.2–0.6 units around the pK values of the components. The buffer capacity measured is expressed as the consumption of NaOH over the pH interval. The amounts of compounds are found from these results using simple models of chemometrics. The method has been applied to a mixture of formic and acetic acids with concentrations of 0–3 mmol/20 ml with an error of 0–0.05 mmol. Furthermore a curve-fitting method based on a theoretical equation of buffer capacity can be applied with an error slightly larger than with the previous method. In this case, the pK values were also computed. For titrations beyond the pH range 4–10, the buffer capacity of water has to be subtracted from the titration results. The whole procedure requires including the computations about 3–6 min.