[Carom]

Hi, new to the board, awesome site....hope i can contribute to keep that way!!!!.

background..

I'm trying to brew diesel at home, I have all the ingredients, but i don't have the approriate equipment to do a decent titration to determine the oil's pH.  However, I do have a pH meter.  usually I make a solution of 30 mL of distilled water / 30 mL of 100% isopropanol and 3 mL of oil.  I can read the pH, no problem.  However, I need to calculate how much KOH (90%) I need to get my oil's pH up to 8.5.  How do I calculate this?

you have the pH of the oil which is 5.8.  and you want to take that pH from 5.8 to 8.5 with KOH 90%.  how do you do this?

thanks for any and all the *delete me*

Mike

[Borek]

It doesn't work this way.

First of all - titration is not the way of determining pH.

Second - just because you know pH, doesn't mean you can calculate amount of base needed for neutralization.

You have to titrate your sample against pH meter to know how much base have to be used for neutralization, there is no other way.

Whether you have to use burette for that is another question. Burette is simple in use and convenient, but in fact you can try to measure volume needed to get to 8.5 using for example syringe. You don't need too high accuracy, as - at least IMHO - final pH have to be adjusted against pH meter. I would use titration just to estimate amount of base - then I would add 95% of that and follow with small amounts of base added when controlling pH. Or something like that, details may require polishing but you should get the idea.