Experiment No 7

Aim-To determine the reaction rate constant of the first order reaction

Theory- Acid catalyzed degradation of methyl acetate has been taken as an example. Methyl acetate
acts like a reactant and acetic acid and methanol as products. To determine the kinetics of the reaction,
acetic acid is withdrawn at regular intervals and titrated with standardized alkali at regular time
intervals.
Requirement-Methyl acetate, standardized M/2 HCl, standardized M/10 NaOH, Phenolphthalein,
thermostat, conical flask, stopwatches and pipettes.

Procedures, observations and calculation-

I. Put 100 ml of M/2 HCl in a 250 ml dry conical flask and place on a water bath at 35ºC.

II. Similarly place the 20 ml of Methyl acetate on the water bath in a stoppered test tube.

III.Take eight 250 ml conical flasks and add 25 ml water into each of them. Put some pieces of ice to
keep the temperature down.

IV. 5 ml of the ester is added into conical flask on water bath containing acid and the mixture is shaken.

V. At predetermined time intervals (0, 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 min ) 5 ml of the reaction mixture is pipette
out and added into the ice cold conical flask and titrated immediately with M/10 NaOH solution
using Phenolphthalein as indicator. NaOH will react with HCl and acetic acid both. The remaining
reaction mixture is placed on elevated temp (60ºC) for 30 min to completely exhaust the reactants.

The initial conc. of methyl acetate can be calculated from the final titration value when methyl
acetate is completely hydrolyzed. At any point of time, titration value is the sum of NaOH consumed
in neutralization of acetic acid as well as HCl.

Initial conc. of methyl acetate = final Conc. = ml

of acetic acid (Y1 ml) analyzed after
elevated temp treatment
Titration value at ‘0’ time (X0) = ml
Titration value at t time (Xt) = ml
Volume of NaOH required to neutralize the = Xt – X0
acetic acid product
= ml

MolarityAcetic acid Х ConcAcetic acid = MolarityNaOH Х ConcNaOH

1
 Molarity of NaOH Х Conc of NaOH
Conc. of consumed in titration (Y2) =
Molarity of Acetic acid

Y2 is also the concentration of Methyl acetate consumed in the hydrolysis because from the balanced
chemical equation we can say 1 mole of methyl acetate produces 1 mole of acetic acid.

Hence, Remaining conc. of Methyl acetate is Y1-Y2.

For a 1st order reaction, the graph between Log (Y2 – Y1) Vs time is a straight line. Furthermore, by
measuring the value of Y2 and at time‘t’, the value of K can be calculated.

2.303 (1
K= log
t (1 − (2

Results-