Titration

Summary

Titration (also known as titrimetry and volumetric analysis) is a common laboratory method of quantitative chemical analysis to determine the concentration of an identified analyte (a substance to be analyzed). A reagent, termed the titrant or titrator, is prepared as a standard solution of known concentration and volume. The titrant reacts with a solution of analyte (which may also be termed the titrand) to determine the analyte's concentration. The volume of titrant that reacted with the analyte is termed the titration volume. The word "titration" descends from the French word titrer (1543), meaning the proportion of gold or silver in coins or in works of gold or silver; i.e., a measure of fineness or purity. Tiltre became titre, which thus came to mean the "fineness of alloyed gold", and then the "concentration of a substance in a given sample". In 1828, the French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac first used titre as a verb (titrer), meaning "to determine the concentration of a substance in a given sample". Volumetric analysis originated in late 18th-century France. François-Antoine-Henri Descroizilles (fr) developed the first burette (which was similar to a graduated cylinder) in 1791. Gay-Lussac developed an improved version of the burette that included a side arm, and invented the terms "pipette" and "burette" in an 1824 paper on the standardization of indigo solutions. The first true burette was invented in 1845 by the French chemist Étienne Ossian Henry (1798–1873). A major improvement of the method and popularization of volumetric analysis was due to Karl Friedrich Mohr, who redesigned the burette into a simple and convenient form, and who wrote the first textbook on the topic, Lehrbuch der chemisch-analytischen Titrirmethode (Textbook of analytical chemistry titration methods), published in 1855. A typical titration begins with a beaker or Erlenmeyer flask containing a very precise amount of the analyte and a small amount of indicator (such as phenolphthalein) placed underneath a calibrated burette or chemistry pipetting syringe containing the titrant.