SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC DETERMINATION OF THE ACID DISSOCIATION
CONSTANT OF METHYL RED
Submitted By: Frances Abegail G. Quezon Spectrophotometry is an instrumental type of analysis. In particular, it is a method relating the absorption of light to chemical concentration. [1] Spectrophotometry makes use of an instrument called a spectrophotometer. A spectrophotometer is an instrument that determines the absorbance of a given solution. This experiment made use of a UV Vis Double-Beam Spectrophotometer. The objective of the experiment is to determine the K a of methyl red. Methyl red was present in 2 species, HMR and MR -. The wavelength at maximum absorption at both HMR and MR - was determined and the absorbance of the standard and sample solutions were determined at both wavelengths. Beer-Lambert law or Beers law provides a direct relationship between light absorbance and analyte concentration. Stated below is the said law: A = bc (1) [2] where A = absorbance = molar absorptivity coefficient b = path length in cm c = analyte molar concentration This equation could also be treated as a linear equation with A = y, b = m and c = x. The y-intercept b, in the linear equation y = mx + b, is assumed to be 0, but experimental errors would usually cause a non-zero value for the yintercept. Using Beers law requires using carefully matched cells in the instrument since mismatched cells would cause the y-intercept to be a value far from 0. [3] However, Beers law is limited to monochromatic light only. [3] This is the reason why there are 4 values used for the molar absorptivity coefficient. The absorbance of the standard solution at a certain wavelength was plotted against the solutions concentration. Using linear regression, the slope was obtained. The slope is equal to since path length is just 1. Table 1. Absorptivity Coefficents Solution 1 2 3 4 5 6 No. Absorbanc 0.746 0.478 0.278 0.031 0.024 0.017 e HMR (HMR) 50, 534. 59139 1,511. 876699 Absorbanc 0.065 0.042 0.026 0.321 0.218 0.115 e MR ( MR-) 4211.112286 22.246.18571 These molar absorptivity coefficients were used to calculate the [MR -] and [HMR]. The following equations were used: A HMR = (HMR, HMR)b[HMR] + (MR-,HMR)b[MR-] (2) A MR- = (HMR,MR-)b[HMR] + (MR-,MR-)b[MR-] (3) HMR solutions have a pH of ~2 because it is acidic. MR - is the conjugate base of HMR which is why it was acceptable for this species to have a pH of ~8.
The pH of the solutions needed to be measured because the working
equation for this part was pH = pKa + log ([MR-]/[HMR]) (3) Linear regression was then used to solve for the y-intercept, pKa.
Figure 1. pKa graph
The pKa was determined to be 5.06. This has a 1.14% deviation from the theoretical value of 5.00.[3] The Ka was determined to be 8.78 x 10-6. Deviations from the theoretical value may be accounted for by the following errors: Table 2. Sources of Errors Error Parameter Effect Presence of stray light Absorbance Decrease Error in solution preparation
pKa
Indeterminate
The objective of the experiment was to calculate the Ka for methyl
read. The Ka was determined to be 8.78 x 10 -6. This has only a 1.14% percent deviation from the theoretical value. This means that the results obtained are accurate. The success of the experiment proves that even though BeerLamberts law is limited to monochromatic light, it can be used to process data from polychromatic light, provided that the computations for different wavelengths are separately processed. REFERENCES [1]Harris, D. Quantitative Chemical Analysis 5th ed. W.H. Freeman and Company: New York, 2001. [2]Institute of Chemistry. Quantitative Inorganic Analysis Laboratory Manual [3] Skoog, D., et al. Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry 8th ed. Thomson Learning Asia: Singapore; 2004.