Determination of sulphuric acid in process effluent streams using sequential injection titration

Sulphuric acid in process effluent streams from an electrorefining copper plant was analysed with a sequential injection (SI) titration system using sodium hydroxide as titrant. In the proposed SI titration system a base titrant, acid analyte and base titrant zone were injected sequentially into a distilled water carrier stream in a holding coil and swept by flow reversal through a reaction coil to the detector. The base zones contained bromothymol blue as indicator and the endpoint was monitored spectrophotometrically at 620 nm. The influence of carrier stream flow rate, acid and base zone volumes and titrant concentration on the linear range of the method was studied to obtain an optimum. A linear relationship between peak width and logarithm of the acid concentration was obtained in the range 0.006–0.178 mol l−1 of H2SO4 for a NaOH concentration of 0.002 mol l−1. The results obtained for the SI titration of process samples were in good agreement with a standard potentiometric method with an RSD<0.75% and a sample frequency of 23 samples h−1.