Romanian Journal of Ecology & Environmental Chemistry
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pH-metric method determining the solubility and solubility products of slightly soluble salts of arbitrary composition


Authors: IGOR POVAR, OXANA SPINU, BORIS PINTILIE

Keywords: residual concentration, slightly soluble salts, solubility, solubility products, thermodynamic modeling
https://doi.org/10.21698/rjeec.2021.208

The developed method of determining KS from pH metric data has a number of advantages compared to those used traditionally. First, in place of the residual concentrations of the salt components, only the pH value of the saturated solution is used in the derived expressions. Thus, the number of independent variables, which need to be measured experimentally, is reduced. Furthermore, the potentiometric method, used to determine the pH, is sufficiently accurate, simple, and universal and does not necessitate the use of ion-selective electrodes. At the same time, the residual concentrations are usually measured by chemical methods, which are inferior in most cases, for several reasons, compared to the potentiometric method. Second, the KS value calculated by the developed method has a thermodynamic character. The organization of the experiment must be appropriate to the applied equations. Therefore, it is necessary to draw attention to the need for high accuracy in the process of preparing the initial solutions, because the initial concentrations of the precipitate components are included in the calculation formulas. The developed method for determining Ks can be applied for systems of any degree of complexity, which contain additional complexing agents.