Spectrophotometric determination of acidity constants by two-rank annihilation factor analysis Original Research Article

Annihilation of the contribution of one chemical component from the original data matrix is a general method in rank annihilation factor analysis (RAFA). However, RAFA is not applicable for studying the protonation equilibria of multiprotic acids. In this work, a two-rank annihilation factor analysis (TRAFA) method was proposed for determination of the acidity constants of diprotic acids. After recording the electronic absorbance spectra of the acids at different pH, the contributions of both H2A and A2− were annihilated from the absorbance data, which made feasible the determination of two successive acidity constants. The method was validated by analysis of simulated data and its application to the determination of the acidity constants of calmagite, as a reference compound. A close agreement was obtained between the resulted values by TRAFA and the declared values. Indeed, the method was used for determination of the acidity constants of two new chromenone derivatives in binary solvents mixtures of methanol and water. The effects of changing solvent composition on acidity constant data were explained by linear solvation free energy relationships (LSFER) utilizing solvatochromic parameters.