The experiment used volumetric analysis, in which a known quantity of a substance reacts with an unknown amount of another substance for an aqueous solution reaction.2 To standardize the NaOH solution and determine the molar concentration, it needed to react with a primary standard acid due to NaOH being hygroscopic, in which it readily absorbs water vapor.1 In this case, KHC8H4O4 served as the primary acid standard since it’s only slightly hygroscopic and the mass was known, in which the moles could then be calculated from using the equation: mass (g) KHC8H4O4 mol KHC8H4O4204.23 g KHC8H4O4= mol KHC8H4O4
The reaction occurs with the dispensal of the NaOH titrant from the buret into a flask containing the KHC8H4O4, which functioned as the analyte. The balanced equation for this reaction was:
KHC8H4O4 (aq) + NaOH (aq) → H2O (l) + NaKC8H4O4 (aq).
This indicates that there is a one-to-one mole ratio, in which one mole of KHC8H4O4 reacts with one mole of