Neutralising Acid with NaOH - Tips for Accurate Measurement

[thearny]

I have recently entered the world of chemistry, and am required to neutralise an acid to the stoichiometric point using NaOH. Problem is I have granular NaOH and try titrating it, but keep missing under or over. Is there an easy way to control this that I do not know about?

 

[Borek]

No easy way. Standard way of finding end point is to titrate slowly against some indicator (Phenolphthalein will do in this case), dropwise near the end point - this way your mistake will be never larger then the drop.

Chemical calculators at www.chembuddy.com

 

[gravenewworld]

did you try making a titration curve and try to find the equivalence point of the graph?

 

[DrMark]

The standard procedure is to first make a solution of NaOH of 'known' molarity (note NaOH is quite hydroscopic). Second is to take an acid of know molarity and titrate the base to find it's real molarity. Once this is known you carefully (aka drop wise) titrate the unknown.

 

[DrMark]

I forgot one part. You need to start with a relatively high concentration of a stock base solution. Depending on the statistics you want, you will need to due quantitative dilution of the base until the volume of base used in the titration is significant.