QUANTITATIVE DETERMINATION OF SODA

ASH COMPOSITION BY DOUBLE INDICATOR

TITRATION
J. OLIVEROS1
1
INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGY, COLLEGE OF SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES, DILIMAN, QUEZON CITY 1101, PHILIPPINES
DATE SUBMITTED: 4 MARCH 2015
DATE PERFORMED: 27 FEBRUARY 2015
DISCUSSION
1.Why the distilled water to be used in this experiment need to be boiled?
- It was boiled to get rid of the carbon dioxide that was originally found in the water.
This carbon dioxide may react/provide erroneous results if left within the system of
titration. This is because carbon dioxide, dissolved in water, may form carbonic acid.
This compound might react with the base components of soda ash.
2. Why is a mixture of NaOH and NaHCO3 incompatible?
- OH- from NaOH and HCO 3- from NaHCO3 would react with each other : OH- + HCO3>> H2O + CO32-This reaction would cause a decrease on both OH - and HCO3concentration and production of carbonate ions which can alter the volumes of the
HCLstandard.
3. Why is there a need to boil the solution before reaching the methyl orange
endpoint?
- There is a need to boil the solution for the reaction of the titration to obtain the V mo
that aims to neutralize the HCO3- leads to the formation of carbonic acid which can
alter the color of the solution with the methyl orange indicator, and in order to get rid
of the carbonic acid, it needs to be boiled.
4. What are the basic components?
- The data obtained support the assumption that the soda ash components are
NaHCO3 and Na2CO3.
The two volumes Vmo and V ph are theoretically equal/similar in the titration of Na 2CO3.
The reason for this is because the V ph of HCl that neutralizes the carbonate ion into a
bicarbonate ion, and the Vmo is used to neutralized the same number of moles of the
bicarbonate ion. In the experiment, the V mo obtained is greaterthan V ph, which
means there are more bicarbonate ions in the solution than carbonate ion. This
suggests thats NaHCO3, a base that can supply bicarbonate ions, is also present in
the soda ash

5. Possible sources of errors?

- Errors may be found and acquired by uncertainties in the measurements of the
components in the experiment. Uncertainties in measurements of the solutions can
cause an increase or decrease in the needed volume of the solutions and can change
the results in the analysis of soda ash. Errors in reading the volume of the titrant
used can cause errors in the calculated HCl concentrations. Another source of error is
the determination of the endpoint of the titration since it was based on the color

change, because of this, inevitable human error can be at play, the observers could
have assumed that the endpoint was reached earlier than the exact time and some
could have seen an erroneous pink color. This can increase the molarity of the HCl.
The dissolved carbon dioxide can also be a source of error because it can interfere
with the methyl orange color thus increasing the molarity of the titrant.