Physicochemical Basis of Quantitative Determination of Anionic Surfactant Concentrations by Using an Autotitrator

The application of an autotitrator for the determination of surfactant concentrations has been investigated based upon turbidimetric and photometric techniques. The measured titration curves for the two techniques were found to be very similar indicating a common underlying mechanism. Experiments to investigate this mechanism have shown that the light signal measured by the instrument depends on the texture of an emulsion formed by stirring the aqueous and chloroform phases in the titrator cup. Considering the physio-chemical basis of the measurement a rapid, automatic method has been developed and successfully applied to SDBS.