Chromatography Forum

What method can be used to determine the concentration of a standard buffer solution without using a pH meter?

What method can be used to determine the concentration of a standard buffer solution without using a pH meter?

This question should probably be in a different section than gas chromatography.

Here's what I did - and it drove my pointy-haired boss nuts:
I prepared buffer carefully, and carefully determined how much of the acid or base needed to be added to reach the optimum pH (using pH meter), maybe did this three times. Then I wrote up and validated our procedures to use buffers made up with WEIGHED or volumetric amounts of the acid or base, and never used a pH meter at all. This worked great, sped up preparation significantly, and decreased errors.

Such preparation of buffer has been written in literature, but I don't have a reference to that at hand.

thanks a lot

Caveat - when you encounter a poorly designed method that calls for buffers that either have essentially no buffering capacity, or use notoriously hygroscopic reagents, your mileage will vary (your final pH may be more variable than you would anticipate). Sound technique does not always help victims of poor design.