Titration

Titration is a vital lab method used by Joe in his lab, because many of the products manufactured in the cleaning industry, such as detergent, are composed of an amalgamation of chemicals that do not directly contribute to the main usage of the product. This may include substances for fragrance, "padding/filling", and other additives. The usage of compounds for scent reminds me of esters, because they are known for giving off flavourful aromas, as shown in the esterification lab. A common "padding/filling" substance is soldium sulfate, which is cheap, and can be easily manufactured by reacting sodium chloride with sulphuric acid or sodium oxide with sulphuric acid. Also, it is a relatively stable compound that won't decompose, and it doesn't react with oxidizing or reducing agents at room temperature. Alright, on to titration.

Structural formula of sodium sulphate is shown above.

Joe uses titration to check the percentage of "efficient chemicals" in product samples, and makes sure that it isn't too low or too high. An example of an "efficient chemical" in detergent would be an active ingredient such as sodium lauryl sulfonate. Just like in school labs, a titrant (chemical which the concentration is known) is used to quantitatively determine the concentration of a specific substance in the sample. Even though there is modern technology developed to perform the titration more efficiently, Joe still uses the traditional method --manually ading the titrant through a burette into the sample which has an indicator in it, and looking for the perfect colour change that indicates the endpoint.
One of the simpler titrations that Joe performs is an acid-base titration, which is similar to the ones I carried out in the lab last year. He performs this titration in order to determine the alkalinity of certain cleaning products that are basic. To do this, he adds the cleaning product into a beaker, and hydrochloric acid (the titrant) into the burette. An indicator (Joe actually does use phenolphthalein!) is added into the beaker as well. Joe adds HCl into the titrate until the endpoint, indicated by a faint pink colour in the beaker, is reached, reads the volume off the burette, and calculates the concentration of the cleaning product, making sure that it is at an appropriate level. This method is practically the same as the titrations I performed in school labs, except it is applied to a professional industry. Mole calculations, acid-base neutralizations, and concentration --concepts that I have studied intensely-- are all put to use here.

What a titration looks like. Except, at the endpoint, the colour of the titrate should be pale pink, not as intensly pink as the one shown above.