On-line dilution and determination of the amount of concentrated hydrochloric acid in the final products from a hydrochloric acid production plant using a sequential injection titration system

An on-line sequential injection titration system for the determination of the concentration of concentrated hydrochloric acid as final product from a hydrochloric acid production plant is described. The system involves on-line dilution of the concentrated hydrochloric acid solution to an acceptable range for direct measurement by merging the sample stream with a de-ionized water diluent stream, followed by mixing in a dilution coil, before aspiration into the sequential injection system. Concentrated standard solutions were treated in exactly the same way as the samples. The system was evaluated for reproducibility, linearity, accuracy, and sample throughput. A linear relationship between peak width and logarithm of acid concentration was found in the range 5.934–8.995 mol l−1 and a concentration of 0.005 mol l−1 NaOH solution was used as titrant. Samples from the production plant showed excellent agreement when compared with the manual and automated batchwise titrations. The relative standard deviation was found to be less than 0.4% with a sample frequency of 30 samples per hour.