Advantages and disadvantages of potentiometric titration

Potentiometric titration includes the determination of the potential of a sample as a function of titrant volume, it has many advantages as well as some disadvantages, let's check them.

Potentiometric titration is used to determine electrical potential changes while a neutralizing agent is added to a sample solution. Potentiometric titration is a technique that is like the direct titration of a redox reaction. There are four types of potentiometric titration such as acid-base titration, redox titration, complexometric titration, and precipitation titration.

This includes the determination and recording of the cell potential in the unit of millivolt or pH after each titrant addition. It uses two types of electrodes are used indicator electrode and a reference electrode. The metal ion indicator, glass electrode, calomel electrode, silver chloride electrode, and hydrogen electrode are commonly used in the potentiometric titration. To perform the titration several apparatus are required such as burette, conical flask, pipette, volumetric flask, funnel, stand, beaker, and wash bottle, etc.

Here are mentioned some of the advantages and disadvantages of potentiometric titration.

Advantages of potentiometric titration:

• The major advantage of potentiometric titration is that it is a direct titration in which an indicator is not required to determine the endpoint or equivalence point of the reaction.
• Potentiometric titration is used as an automated system with more sample processing capacity that is applied in different fields.
• It can also perform in a sample containing a small amount of analyte whose concentration needs to be determined.
• The advantage of using this titration method is that it is an economical method.
• The results of this titration are accurate and sharp since the equivalence point is not estimated through a color indicator.
• This type of titration is functional if the solutions are turbulent, fluorescent, and colored where the endpoint obtained by the indicator is masked.
• Automated endpoints give accuracy compared to manual titration.

Disadvantages of potentiometric titration:

• The major disadvantage of potentiometric titration is that they are very sensitive to pH.
• Potentiometric titration takes a longer time than titration with the indicator.
• Errors can occur when preparing solutions or by any contamination.
• If the electrode is exposed to air, the pH reading may be different.
• Need for exactly known concentrations of solutions.
• We need to calibrate frequently.
• It is very sensitive to changes in ionic strength.
• As compared to the manual titration it needs an instrument that has two electrodes, an indicator, and a reference electrode.

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