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Unknown Acid Titration

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The standardized concentration of NaOH was used to identify the unknown acids, this value is shown is experiment 16.1. This mean standardized concentration was 0.0784 M. By titrating a known amount and concentration of this standardized base to the unknown acid, a titration curve and its derivative could be plotted in order to find the molar mass and acid dissociation constant.
The first unknown acid titrated, BGYW, was identified to be Maleic acid, C4H4O4. The identity of the acid was found by taking both the molar mass and pKa into account. However, one pKa value had a very high percent error. The molar mass is taken more into consideration than the pKa value as elaborated on in number 4. The shape of the curve shown in Figure 1 also corresponds …show more content…

Table 16-2-1 in the lab manual was used to compare the pKa and molar mass of the unknown acid to determine the identity. C4H4O4 was the only diprotic acid with comparable molar mass and pKa values with a 31% error for the molar mass and a 12% error for the second pKa value. However, the first pKA value comparison had a 157% error which could be due to experimental error (as shown in Table 1). Increments of NaOH added to reach the endpoint being too large could have also affected the molar mass difference between the unknown and the actual reference value. Since the increments were too large, the equivalence point in Figure 1 is slightly off since it was overshot. Therefore, the initial moles of acid and base were expected to be of lower value than those referenced. The dV uncertainty shown in the sample calculations page +/- 0.44 mL displayed this source of error between the calculations of moles of acid, the half equivalence point and the pKa; accounting partially for the percent error in the molar mass and pKa of the unknown acid versus Maleic (C4H4O4).
Both Figures 3 and 4 were used to identify unknown acid *B4QK as 3,5 Dimethoxybenzoic (C9H10O4). The titration curve only had one inflection point, thus one equivalence point as demonstrated in Figure 3; showing that the acid was monoprotic. The

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