Contribution from the Chemical Laboratory of Grinnell College 
THE ELECTROMETRIC STANDARDIZING OF TITAN- 
OUS SOLUTIONS. (Preliminary Report) 
W. S. HENDRIXSON AND E. M. VERBECK 
The great value of titanous salts in analytical chemistry has be- 
come well known through the work of many chemists. Titanous 
chloride has been used in determining not only inorganic but also 
many organic substances, which are likely to be colored or to 
give colored solution on reduction, thus interfering in the accurate 
determination of end-points in the usual methods of analysis 
where colored indicators are used. Such difficulties would, of 
course, be removed by the application of the voltage method. 
Moreover, so intensely reducing is the titanous ion that an interval 
of nearly one volt is given between a slight excess of titanous ion 
and excess of such oxidizing agents as dichromate and permanga- 
nate, when the calomel-platinum cell is used, and this wide interval 
permits the determination with titanium of two oxidizing agents 
of quite different intensities when present in the same solution. 
The application of the electrometric method in determinations 
with titanium seemed to promise so much of value and convenience 
that we took up the subject early in the fall of 1921. -At that 
date we could find no reference to any such application, but 2 
months later discovered a reference to such a determination by 
Treadwell 1 and his collaborators. Their work seems merely in- 
cidental to research on a new cadmium reductor, and they mention 
it as interesting and probably capable of improvement. It seems 
they have not pursued this line further and it is believed that 
our work does not interfere with theirs, nor with that of Jones 
and Lee 2 on the electrometric titration of azo dyes. 
We sought in the beginning to determine whether a titanous 
solution could be easily and accurately standardized with the 
standard solutions found in every laboratory, — permanganate 
and dichromate. Until quite recently titanous chloride, usually in 
hydrochloric acid solution, has been exclusively used in quantita- 
1 Treadwell, Luethy and Rheiner, Helv. Chim. Acta, [4] 1921 , 551. 
2 Jones and Lee, /. Ind. Eng. Chem., 14 , 46 (1922). 
